MMX celebrates launch of blockchain TLD by joining stock market

Registry service provider Minds + Machines Group (MMX) has celebrated the official launch of its new top-level domain (TLD) .luxe, which runs on the regulated internet as well as on blockchain, by opening trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

MMX, which announced the news on Friday, October 26, said that it has also become a member of the LSE’s Issuer Services Marketplace.

This will allow MMX to “generate deeper awareness amongst London Stock Exchange Group-listed companies for .luxe and its wider portfolio of new domain name extensions”, according to the release.

MMX recently launched the .luxe domain in partnership with Ethereum, an open-source, blockchain-based platform. The .luxe domain is unique as it runs on the ICANN-regulated internet as well as on the Ethereum blockchain platform.

The sunrise period for the new TLD ended on October 8, and the general public will be able to purchase .luxe names from November 6. Before then, an early access programme will run from October 30, allowing names to be purchased subject to an additional one-time fee.

Earlier this month, Sheri Falcon, general counsel at MMX, explained that an increasing number of domain extensions appear as TLDs but actually run outside of the ICANN-regulated internet environment, for example, .onion, .bit, and .coin.

Non-regulated domains do not show up on trademark or brand monitoring programmes, Falcon said, meaning that global brands may be damaged by the use of their name on the dark web.

The new .luxe domain is regulated by ICANN while also being associated with the Ethereum blockchain. It is the first TLD designed to resolve naming conventions both on the world wide web and the Ethereum blockchain, MMX said.

On Friday, MMX was joined by its commercial partners, Alibaba Cloud and Ethereum, in opening trading on the LSE.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the Alibaba Group, is a retail partner of MMX.

Toby Hall, CEO of MMX, said: “We look forward to welcoming others into .luxe in the coming months as well as creating broader awareness for human-readable digital identifiers that can work in multiple online universes.”

Information on MMX’s market position can be found here, and more information on the .luxe launch can be found at: https://www.join.luxe/