A legal dispute has erupted over the expired domain blockchain.ai, which sold in a high-profile Namecheap auction this week. The domain’s former owner, Howard Gould, claims he renewed it before the sale and is now suing to get it back.
According to the complaint, Gould registered the domain in December 2017 through OnlyDomains, which was set to auto-renew. But when the renewal failed, the domain expired on July 19, 2025. Gould says he discovered the issue on September 21 and immediately paid OnlyDomains to renew it, receiving a confirmation of payment.
Two weeks later, Gould noticed something was off—his renewal invoice still showed as “pending,” and blockchain.ai appeared for sale in a Namecheap expired-domain auction.
The .ai domain registry, managed by Identity Digital, partners with Namecheap to auction expired names. When the domain entered its deletion period, an auction was automatically triggered.
OnlyDomains later told Gould he needed to pay an additional restoration fee to recover the domain. Gould says he paid that invoice as well, but the domain still moved into PendingDelete status.
On October 8, Gould’s attorney contacted Identity Digital to stop the auction. The auction proceeded anyway. Gould filed a lawsuit in California, naming OnlyDomains, its parent CentralNic NZ Ltd (part of Team Internet Group), Identity Digital, and Namecheap as defendants.
The case highlights ongoing tension between registrants, registrars, and domain marketplaces over who’s responsible when automation fails—and how little room there is for human error in the domain renewal process.