Link Freedom Group (LFG) aspires to become a best-in-class, vertically integrated domain name registration authority, see linkfreedomgroup.link. This TLD is part of a carefully curated portfolio of strings that LFG intends to pursue in ICANN’s 2026 New gTLD Program. In assembling this portfolio, LFG focused on securing meaningful, memorable, and commercially compelling strings that resonate strongly with end users and offer long-term growth potential.
Over the past four years, LFG (Nova Registry) has successfully grown its flagship TLD, .LINK, from approximately 125,000 to more than 300,000 domains under management. This growth has been driven by innovative distribution strategies, the expansion of registrar partnerships, and a granular pricing model that has enabled .LINK to remain competitively priced while avoiding the significant fee increases implemented by some other registry operators.
LFG’s experience in the domain name industry has reinforced one of the key lessons from the 2012 application round: long-term sustainability is strengthened through portfolio diversification. By spreading operational costs and mitigating revenue fluctuations across multiple TLDs, LFG is better positioned to withstand market volatility and invest in continued growth. Accordingly, LFG believes that even obtaining a subset of the TLDs for which it has applied will establish a diversified portfolio capable of supporting long-term economic stability, operational resilience, and sustainable growth.
The mission of .FIRM is to provide a namespace associated with the concept of firm as a business or professional organization. The .FIRM gTLD is intended to serve a broad range of registrants and users, including individuals, businesses, organizations, communities, projects, and other entities that identify with, relate to, or wish to be associated with the concept represented by the applied-for string.
The purpose of .FIRM is to enable registrants to establish online identities using domain names that correspond to this concept. To achieve this purpose, Neigh Sayer, LLC will make .FIRM available for registration through registrars and other appropriate distribution channels; maintain a secure, stable, and reliable registry infrastructure; implement registration and operational policies that support the availability, security, and integrity of the namespace; and provide ongoing administration of the gTLD to enable registrants to register and use domain names within the namespace.
The purpose of .FIRM is sustainable over time because business and professional organizations will continue to play a fundamental and enduring role across society. As society, technology, and methods of communication evolve, organizations and individuals will continue to establish online identities associated with the applied-for string.
1. Mission and Objectives
Firm is a fundamental English noun expressing meanings such as "company," "business," and "enterprise." In the global context, "firm" carries a universal recognition of commercial entities and professional service providers, serving as an important conceptual symbol across languages and cultures. The mission of .firm is to establish a namespace on the global Internet built upon the concept that "firm" represents, transforming "firm" from a common word into a recognizable and selectable digital identifier, thereby helping Internet users efficiently identify and connect with trustworthy commercial entities and professional service providers. The goal is to make .firm a widely recognized symbol of quality and a bridge of trust connecting dedicated creators with genuine seekers.
Intended Registrants: Open to the public.
Intended users: Global English-speaking Internet users and those seeking to identify reliable businesses and professional service providers. Through .firm domains, users can quickly identify trustworthy companies and enterprises.
Relevant activities: NETDREAM PTE. LTD. will conduct market promotion and awareness-building activities for the .firm domain, including cooperative showcases with content creators, using real cases to enhance public recognition of the .firm domain; and will establish routine abuse monitoring and rapid response mechanisms to safeguard the credibility of the namespace.
2. Long-Term Sustainability
The long-term sustainability of .firm rests on three pillars:
First, the enduring nature of cultural consensus. "Firm" as a conceptual symbol of commercial entities transcends geographical, generational, and industry boundaries. No matter how economic structures evolve, business entities remain fundamental components of economic activity. This provides .firm with a cultural foundation that extends beyond business cycles.
Second, the structural growth of market demand. With the deepening of the digital economy, user demand for identifying and connecting with trustworthy commercial entities continues to rise. As a simple entry point for recognizing businesses, .firm naturally aligns with this trend, laying a foundation for sustained growth in registrations and user needs.
Third, the robustness of the business model. NETDREAM PTE. LTD. possesses sufficient financial resources and a professional operations team to ensure the long-term stable operation of .firm, fully meeting ICANN's security, stability, and compliance requirements. As an open TLD, .firm does not rely on any single industry, and will achieve commercial self-sustainability through reasonable pricing and organic registration growth. NETDREAM PTE. LTD. will actively collaborate with registrars in abuse governance, making .firm a quality identifier that users can rely on for the long term.
1. Mission and purpose: The mission of .firm is to give businesses that call themselves firms a namespace that matches their own vocabulary. Intended registrants include firms of every size across consulting, strategy, research, creative, design, technology, marketing and media, together with the directories, recruiters and publishers that serve them. Intended users are the clients, candidates and partners who engage firms worldwide. Following delegation, the applicant will, as registry operator of the .firm TLD, conduct a phased launch, implement all ICANN-required rights protection mechanisms, and distribute the TLD through ICANN-accredited registrars, supported by marketing and outreach to build awareness and adoption among the intended registrant and user groups. The TLD will be operated under a comprehensive DNS abuse prevention and mitigation framework covering the full range of abuse types, combining proactive and reactive controls. Abuse reports will be investigated and actioned in line with applicable policy requirements. The objective is to maintain .firm as a high-quality, trusted namespace for registrants and end users.
2. Sustainability: The firm, meaning a company or partnership trading under a common name, is one of the most durable organizational forms in commerce, spanning centuries and every economy; new firms form continuously as people establish independent businesses. The word is standard business vocabulary worldwide and is not tied to any single profession or sector.
1. Mission and Purpose of the Applied-for gTLD
.firm gives professional partnerships a web address that states plainly what they are. Many practices operate as a firm in the truest sense: a group of experts who pool their reputations under one name and stand behind their collective work. The namespace is built for practices that trade on judgment, expertise, and trust rather than mass-market products. For a law, accounting, consulting, design, or advisory partnership, the name is often the first thing a client encounters. A clear, category-defining address helps that practice create a recognizable presence, distinguish itself from a crowded field of generic addresses, and signal that it operates as an established professional entity.
.firm also gives partnerships naming room that has grown scarce elsewhere. A distinctive practice name paired with .firm can produce a short, memorable, on-point address even when the equivalent option in older namespaces is long since taken. This helps a firm turn its name into something clients remember, refer, and return to, while keeping the branding aligned across signage, correspondence, proposals, and the web.
The purpose is not to serve every business, but to serve the specific slice of the market that identifies as a firm and wants that identity reflected online.
Intended Registrants: Professional partnerships and practices, including law firms, accounting and audit practices, consulting groups, architecture and engineering studios, financial advisory partnerships, and boutique agencies operating under a formal firm structure.
Related Activities Supporting the Purpose:
• Registrar distribution aimed at professional services providers and their web and branding partners.
• Awareness-building among partnerships that want a web address matching how they already describe themselves.
• Registrant education explaining how a category-defining suffix can clarify the nature of a practice at a glance.
• Community outreach to professional associations and the studios, marketers, and developers who build sites for firms.
• Responsible registry operations supporting stable, predictable availability of the namespace.
2. Sustainability of the Purpose Over Time
The partnership of professionals is one of the oldest continuously operating business structures in commerce. .firm bundles individual reputations into a shared name, distributes liability and standards across partners, and outlasts any single practitioner. Partners retire and join, but the firm endures, and its name carries forward the trust it has accumulated.
.firm occupies the space between broad business extensions and profession-specific labels. Where a generic address says nothing about structure and a single-profession suffix can box a practice in, .firm communicates standing and collective accountability while staying open to any discipline. It is positioned as the identity choice for practices that want their name to carry the weight of an established partnership.
Bar associations, accountancy and audit bodies, engineering and architecture boards, and financial regulators license, insure, and discipline at the level of the practice as well as the individual. Referral networks, professional indemnity arrangements, and client procurement processes are all organized around the firm as the contracting party. New advisory disciplines keep emerging (cybersecurity, sustainability assurance, data governance, regulatory strategy), and each tends to organize into practices once the work demands specialization and collective standing.
The label adapts to whatever expertise is being offered while the underlying arrangement, experts joined under one accountable name, stays constant. This is why the word has survived shifts in industry, geography, and generation: it names a way of organizing professional trust, not a passing category of service.
".FIRM" is proposed as an open namespace for any organized group of people operating under a shared identity, purpose, or practice. Professional services organizations represent the most immediate and prominent registrant category: law firms, accounting practices, management consulting firms, financial advisory groups, architecture and engineering practices, and medical group practices all operate under the word "firm" in its most established sense. The namespace extends naturally to any organized entity operating with a collective identity and a defined purpose: a research collective, a design studio, a talent agency, a trade association, or a policy think tank each functions as a firm without necessarily falling within a licensed professional services category. Community organizations, civic groups, religious bodies, nonprofits, sole practitioners, and boutique consultancies across any discipline find a natural home here as much as large multi-partner practices do. Registration is open and non-exclusive; no practice area, organizational structure, or registrant size is privileged over another.
1. Mission and purpose. This gTLD will be operated as an open, unrestricted generic top-level domain. Its purpose is to expand naming choice in the DNS by making this term available at the top level for any lawful use chosen by the registrant. Registrations will be available to all registrants on a first-come, first-served basis through ICANN-accredited registrars, subject only to the Registry Agreement, ICANN Consensus Policies, and applicable law. The applicant will not operate this gTLD on an exclusive basis.
2. Intended registrants and users. Intended registrants are individuals, businesses, and other organizations worldwide seeking a short, meaningful domain name. There are no eligibility or name selection restrictions beyond those required by the Registry Agreement, ICANN Consensus Policies, and applicable law. Intended users are internet users worldwide who access domain names registered in this gTLD.
3. Related activities. The applicant is an established registry operator under contract with ICANN for 35 gTLDs, including .xyz. It has in place a qualified Registry Service Provider, distribution agreements with ICANN-accredited registrars across multiple regions, and all required rights protection mechanisms and DNS abuse mitigation practices. For this gTLD the applicant will onboard the TLD to its existing registry platform, conduct a Sunrise Period and Trademark Claims Period, launch General Availability through its registrar channel, and maintain ongoing registrar enablement, abuse monitoring, and compliance reporting.
4. Sustainability. Operation is funded by recurring registration and renewal revenue and does not depend on any single registrant, sector, or campaign. This gTLD will run on the applicant's existing shared registry infrastructure, so incremental operating cost is low and no minimum registration volume is required for viability. The applicant has operated gTLDs continuously since 2014.