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Domari

A New Standard for Domain Trading

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Overview

Domari is an open-source, privacy-focused domain trading platform designed to enable domain owners to list, discover, negotiate, and sell domain names through a secure, extensible, and interoperable marketplace. The platform provides domain ownership verification, end-to-end encrypted communication, privacy-enabled listings, flexible pricing models, transaction coordination, and tools for managing individual domains and large portfolios.

Domari is designed around user ownership, privacy, security, transparency, and independent deployment. Domain owners retain control over their listings, pricing, negotiation preferences, personal information, and transaction decisions. The platform supports a modular architecture with comprehensive core modules and optional plugin modules that extend functionality without requiring every deployment to adopt every feature.

The system should support independent marketplace deployments, documented APIs, portable listing data, and optional federation between participating instances. Its architecture should minimize centralized dependencies while preserving reliable verification, secure communication, and consistent transaction workflows.

Project Goals

• Establish an open-source foundation for domain trading and discovery.
• Give domain owners control over listing visibility, pricing, and sales.
• Protect confidential communications through end-to-end encryption.
• Verify control of listed domains using cryptographically verifiable challenges.
• Minimize unnecessary collection and disclosure of personal information.
• Support fixed-price sales, offers, negotiations, and auctions.
• Provide secure transaction coordination and domain transfer workflows.
• Enable independent deployments and extensible marketplace functionality.
• Support interoperability through documented APIs and standardized data formats.
• Allow optional integrations without making external providers mandatory.
• Maintain transparent security boundaries, permissions, and operational policies.
• Ensure consequential actions require explicit authorization from the appropriate user.

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Core Architectural Principles

Modular Design

• Organize the platform into independently maintainable core modules with clearly defined responsibilities.
• Define stable interfaces between modules.
• Allow optional capabilities to be added through documented plugin interfaces.
• Prevent optional modules from becoming mandatory dependencies of unrelated core functionality.
• Support module-level permissions, configuration, validation, and testing.
• Maintain compatibility contracts for APIs, data formats, and module interfaces.
• Support future expansion without requiring a redesign of the entire platform.

Privacy by Design

• Collect only information necessary for explicitly defined platform functions.
• Separate public listing information from private account information and confidential transaction data.
• Provide granular controls for visibility, disclosure, and data retention.
• Avoid exposing private information through public APIs, search indexes, analytics, or notifications.
• Clearly disclose information shared with registrars, payment providers, escrow services, and other third parties.
• Support self-hosted deployments with administrator-controlled data policies.
• Make privacy limitations and metadata exposure understandable to users.

Security by Design

• Apply least-privilege access controls throughout the platform.
• Protect sensitive data during transmission and storage.
• Use established cryptographic protocols and independently reviewed implementations.
• Require authenticated, authorized operations for sensitive actions.
• Protect against impersonation, replay attacks, unauthorized changes, and fraudulent listings.
• Maintain security audit records without unnecessarily recording confidential content.
• Provide secure defaults and documented threat models.
• Support vulnerability reporting, remediation, and security testing.

User Control

• Require explicit authorization for consequential account, financial, and domain transfer actions.
• Keep listing changes, offer acceptance, payment authorization, and transfer completion distinct.
• Do not allow automated recommendations to become transaction authorization.
• Provide clear confirmation steps for material actions.
• Allow users to configure notification preferences, listing visibility, and supported integrations.
• Preserve user control over encryption keys and private communications.

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Core Modules

Marketplace Listings Module

Provide the primary domain listing and discovery functionality.

Features:

• Create, edit, publish, pause, withdraw, and remove listings.
• Support individual domains and domain portfolios.
• Support fixed-price, negotiable, auction, and offers-based listings.
• Define asking prices, minimum acceptable offers, supported currencies, and sale conditions.
• Include domain descriptions, categories, keywords, and relevant listing metadata.
• Support public, restricted, invitation-only, and privacy-enabled listings.
• Track listing status, publication dates, changes, and expiration.
• Detect duplicate listings within the marketplace.
• Support draft listings and optional scheduled publication.
• Provide bulk listing management and structured import and export.
• Display domain verification status and relevant verification dates.
• Distinguish active listings from pending transactions and completed sales.
• Preserve an appropriate history of material listing changes.
• Support configurable listing policies and marketplace fees.
• Allow owners to control the disclosure of seller identity and contact information.

Domain Ownership Verification Module

Provide mechanisms for verifying that a user can demonstrate control over a domain.

Features:

• Support DNS TXT record challenges.
• Support nameserver-based challenges where appropriate.
• Integrate with registrar APIs when available and authorized.
• Generate unique, unpredictable verification challenges.
• Validate challenge responses and record verification outcomes.
• Apply expiration periods to verification challenges.
• Track verification status, timestamps, and relevant evidence.
• Revalidate ownership control periodically or when circumstances require it.
• Detect conflicting claims and potentially stale verification records.
• Require reverification when verification evidence becomes invalid.
• Provide clear explanations of verification failures.
• Support optional third-party verification providers through defined interfaces.
• Maintain auditable verification events without exposing unnecessary private information.

Verification must distinguish technical control of a domain from verified legal identity and legal ownership. A successful DNS challenge alone must not be represented as proof of legal title.

User Identity and Authentication Module

Provide secure account access and identity management.

Features:

• Support secure account registration and authentication.
• Support passkeys and compatible security keys.
• Provide optional multi-factor authentication.
• Manage authenticated sessions and registered devices.
• Allow users to revoke sessions and invalidate compromised credentials.
• Support pseudonymous public profiles.
• Separate public profile identifiers from private account information.
• Provide secure account recovery with clearly disclosed security trade-offs.
• Notify users of significant account security events.
• Apply rate limits and protections against automated account abuse.
• Support role-based access control and clearly defined permissions.
• Allow users to review active sessions and connected applications.
• Protect account recovery workflows against unauthorized access.

Privacy and Data Protection Module

Give users control over the collection, visibility, retention, and disclosure of personal and confidential information.

Features:

• Separate public listing data from private account and transaction information.
• Provide configurable listing visibility and selective disclosure.
• Support pseudonymous participation where transaction requirements permit it.
• Restrict access to personal information according to explicit permissions.
• Support data export and eligible deletion requests.
• Define configurable retention policies for eligible data.
• Minimize sensitive information in logs, analytics, and notifications.
• Document metadata that may remain visible to platform operators or external providers.
• Provide privacy controls for self-hosted deployments.
• Prevent private data from entering unrestricted search indexes or public API responses.

Privacy controls must clearly explain that pseudonymity on the marketplace does not guarantee anonymity to registrars, payment processors, escrow providers, or other parties involved in a transaction.

End-to-End Encrypted Messaging Module

Provide confidential communication between buyers and sellers.

Features:

• Encrypt message contents on the sender’s device before transmission.
• Decrypt messages only on authorized recipient devices.
• Use established authenticated encryption and key exchange protocols.
• Support secure initial key establishment and verification.
• Provide message integrity and sender authentication.
• Support encrypted attachments and confidential transaction documents.
• Support device registration, key rotation, and device revocation.
• Minimize server-side access to message metadata.
• Support configurable message retention.
• Provide secure encrypted backups only through explicitly configured mechanisms.
• Explain the security implications of account and key recovery.
• Notify users of relevant key changes and verification failures.
• Protect against unauthorized key substitution and downgrade attacks.
• Prevent administrators and plugins from bypassing encryption protections.
• Provide security documentation describing the encryption model and its limitations.

The server must not possess the keys required to decrypt end-to-end encrypted message contents. Private messages must not be indexed as plaintext. Public listing fields must remain separate from encrypted communications.

Search and Discovery Module

Enable buyers to discover domains using public and explicitly shared listing information.

Features:

• Search by complete domain name, partial name, keyword, or phrase.
• Filter by domain extension, category, price, listing type, and verification status.
• Filter by availability for immediate purchase, negotiation, or auction.
• Sort by relevance, price, publication date, and other disclosed criteria.
• Search domain descriptions and approved public metadata.
• Support saved searches and optional search alerts.
• Provide favorites and watchlists.
• Identify similar domain names and related listings.
• Support internationalized domain names where applicable.
• Provide pagination and efficient search results.
• Update indexes when listings change, expire, or are withdrawn.
• Offer documented search interfaces for external applications.
• Apply rate limits and abuse prevention to search requests.
• Support configurable search visibility for independent deployments.

Search must never reveal private seller details, confidential negotiations, encrypted messages, or restricted portfolio information.

Offers and Negotiation Module

Support structured purchase offers and private negotiations.

Features:

• Submit offers against active listings.
• Accept, reject, counter, or withdraw eligible offers.
• Define minimum offer amounts and expiration periods.
• Support multiple offers where the seller permits them.
• Maintain negotiation history for authorized participants.
• Notify participants of offer status changes.
• Support configurable negotiation deadlines.
• Display relevant currency and pricing information.
• Distinguish indicative offers from binding commitments.
• Support optional purchase terms and agreement documents.
• Require explicit seller authorization before accepting an offer.
• Prevent unauthorized changes to accepted terms.
• Track the transition from accepted offer to transaction.

The platform must clearly communicate the legal status and conditions of offers and agreements.

Auction Management Module

Provide optional auction functionality within the core marketplace.

Features:

• Create scheduled domain auctions.
• Define opening prices, reserve prices, bid increments, and closing times.
• Support configurable auction durations.
• Validate bids against published auction rules.
• Track bid history and auction status.
• Support configurable bidder identity visibility.
• Provide outbid alerts and closing reminders.
• Support optional anti-sniping extensions.
• Define cancellation, withdrawal, and dispute policies.
• Notify winners and other participants when auctions conclude.
• Coordinate winning bids with transaction creation.
• Maintain auditable auction events.
• Apply configurable eligibility requirements.
• Detect suspicious bidding activity and potential manipulation.

Auction rules must be disclosed before participation, and the system must enforce the applicable rules consistently.

Transaction Coordination Module

Coordinate the stages of a domain sale without assuming that every registrar or payment provider supports the same operations.

Features:

• Create transactions from accepted offers or completed auctions.
• Record agreed pricing, currency, terms, and participants.
• Track transaction milestones and deadlines.
• Support buyer and seller confirmation steps.
• Provide domain transfer instructions.
• Support registrar-specific transfer workflows through defined interfaces.
• Track authorization-code requirements without unnecessarily exposing credentials.
• Support domain pushes and inter-registrar transfers where available.
• Verify transfer progress through supported evidence.
• Coordinate payment and transfer milestones according to the agreed transaction terms.
• Handle failed, delayed, canceled, or disputed transactions.
• Provide receipts and downloadable transaction records.
• Maintain an auditable transaction status history.
• Prevent unauthorized transaction completion.
• Clearly identify responsibilities assigned to the buyer, seller, marketplace, registrar, and payment or escrow provider.

The marketplace must not claim that a transfer is complete solely because a payment was received or a transfer request was submitted.

Payment Integration Module

Provide interfaces for supported payment and settlement services.

Features:

• Support integration with eligible fiat payment providers.
• Support optional cryptocurrency payment integrations.
• Track payment intents, authorization, settlement, and failure states.
• Display marketplace fees and transaction costs before confirmation.
• Support refunds through providers that permit them.
• Record payment references and reconciliation status.
• Provide transaction receipts.
• Support configurable transaction limits and risk controls.
• Detect inconsistent payment and transaction states.
• Provide interfaces for optional escrow services.
• Support currency conversion information through external providers.
• Keep payment credentials and secrets out of public listing records.
• Document provider-specific limitations and dependencies.

The core platform must distinguish payment processing from escrow. Funds must not be represented as protected by escrow unless an actual, appropriately configured escrow arrangement exists.

Notifications Module

Deliver relevant marketplace, transaction, and security notifications.

Features:

• Notify sellers of new inquiries and offers.
• Notify buyers of counteroffers and transaction updates.
• Provide auction and bidding notifications.
• Send listing expiration and ownership verification reminders.
• Notify participants of payment and transfer milestones.
• Provide account security and session alerts.
• Notify users about disputes and moderation actions.
• Support configurable delivery channels.
• Allow users to manage notification preferences.
• Minimize confidential information in email, push, and lock-screen notifications.
• Prevent notification abuse and excessive delivery.
• Respect user-defined notification settings where operationally possible.

Reputation and Trust Module

Provide transparent signals to help users assess marketplace participation.

Features:

• Display verified domain control indicators.
• Track eligible completed transactions.
• Support optional buyer and seller reviews.
• Define transparent reputation calculation rules.
• Distinguish verified transaction history from unverified user claims.
• Allow users to report suspicious listings and behavior.
• Provide moderation and appeal workflows.
• Detect duplicate, manipulated, or abusive reviews.
• Protect confidential dispute information.
• Support configurable reputation requirements for specific transactions.
• Explain the limitations of reputation indicators.

Reputation scores must not be presented as guarantees of legal ownership, payment reliability, or transaction safety.

Domain Portfolio Management Module

Provide tools for managing multiple domains and associated listings.

Features:

• Organize domains into portfolios and categories.
• Manage multiple listings through a unified interface.
• Import and export portfolio records.
• Update eligible listing information in bulk.
• Track verification status and domain expiration dates.
• Maintain acquisition and sale records where supplied or verified.
• Provide portfolio-level visibility controls.
• Generate optional portfolio activity reports.
• Support team access with explicit permissions.
• Notify owners about expiring domains and stale verification.
• Protect confidential acquisition costs and portfolio valuations.
• Support independent portfolio management integrations.

Public API and Interoperability Module

Expose documented interfaces for authorized access and third-party integrations.

Features:

• Provide versioned APIs for public listing discovery.
• Support authenticated listing management.
• Define interfaces for offers, auctions, and transaction status.
• Support webhooks for authorized marketplace events.
• Use scoped access tokens and explicit permissions.
• Apply rate limits and abuse prevention.
• Validate incoming requests and webhook signatures.
• Provide structured listing import and export formats.
• Document API versions and compatibility guarantees.
• Support integrations with registrar, payment, escrow, and notification services.
• Ensure public endpoints expose only approved public data.
• Provide integration testing and conformance guidance.

Private messages, authentication secrets, encryption keys, and confidential transaction data must never be exposed through unrestricted API access.

Federation and Independent Marketplace Module

Support optional interoperability between independently operated Domari instances.

Features:

• Discover listings published by participating instances.
• Define interoperable listing formats and stable identifiers.
• Attribute listings to their source instances.
• Support signed listing updates where appropriate.
• Define instance-level trust and acceptance policies.
• Detect duplicate or conflicting listings across participating instances.
• Track listing expiration, withdrawal, and revocation events.
• Revalidate domain control according to local policy.
• Allow administrators to block abusive or untrusted instances.
• Support portable listing data and independent marketplace clients.
• Keep local moderation and access policies under instance control.
• Clearly distinguish remote claims from locally verified information.

Federation must be optional. Each instance must retain control over which external sources it trusts and which listings it displays.

Security and Audit Module

Protect the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the platform.

Features:

• Enforce authorization checks on sensitive operations.
• Protect against injection attacks, cross-site scripting, request forgery, and insecure direct object references.
• Secure session, token, and credential handling.
• Apply rate limits and automated abuse protections.
• Protect against replay attacks and unauthorized webhook requests.
• Validate input and enforce data integrity constraints.
• Secure sensitive configuration and integration secrets.
• Maintain audit records for security-sensitive actions.
• Avoid recording private message contents and unnecessary personal information.
• Support encrypted backups and restoration testing.
• Provide vulnerability reporting and remediation procedures.
• Support dependency scanning and security testing.
• Document incident response and recovery procedures.
• Support independent security assessments.

Administration and Governance Module

Provide operational controls for independent marketplace deployments.

Features:

• Configure marketplace policies and listing requirements.
• Manage administrator and moderator permissions.
• Review reported listings and suspected abuse.
• Provide dispute handling and appeal workflows.
• Configure fees, categories, and verification policies.
• Maintain administrative action records.
• Track material policy changes.
• Configure federation trust policies.
• Monitor service health and operational errors.
• Support transparent moderation procedures.
• Separate sensitive administrative responsibilities.
• Prevent administrative privileges from bypassing end-to-end encryption.

Data Management Module

Maintain consistent, portable, and appropriately protected marketplace records.

Features:

• Store structured account, listing, offer, auction, and transaction records.
• Enforce referential integrity and transaction consistency.
• Support efficient listing queries and indexing.
• Separate public information from private and encrypted fields.
• Provide versioned data migrations.
• Support automated backups and restoration procedures.
• Apply configurable retention policies.
• Support user data export and eligible deletion requests.
• Maintain records necessary for ongoing transactions and applicable legal obligations.
• Detect stale and inconsistent records.
• Support idempotent processing of transaction events.
• Provide data integrity checks and operational monitoring.
• Support portability between compatible Domari deployments.

Analytics and Reporting Module

Provide useful operational and marketplace insights while protecting user privacy.

Features:

• Aggregate listing and discovery activity.
• Report offer, auction, and transaction statistics.
• Track listing duration and conversion metrics.
• Provide marketplace fee and operational reports.
• Support portfolio-level reporting for authorized owners.
• Detect broad trends in suspicious activity.
• Export eligible reports.
• Configure analytics retention.
• Support optional analytics integrations.
• Minimize collection of personally identifiable information.
• Prevent analytics from exposing confidential messages, private searches, or restricted portfolio information.

Accessibility and Internationalization Module

Make the marketplace usable across devices, languages, and accessibility needs.

Features:

• Provide responsive interfaces for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
• Support keyboard navigation and screen readers.
• Provide accessible form validation and status messages.
• Support configurable text size and contrast.
• Localize interface text.
• Support multilingual listing descriptions.
• Format prices, currencies, dates, and times appropriately.
• Apply time-zone-aware auction deadlines.
• Support internationalized domain names where applicable.
• Provide accessible security and privacy controls.
• Support right-to-left interfaces where applicable.

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Optional Plugin Modules

Registrar Integration Plugins

• Connect to supported registrar APIs.
• Retrieve eligible domain status information.
• Assist with domain verification.
• Provide transfer instructions and supported transfer operations.
• Track registrar-specific restrictions.
• Manage registrar integration credentials securely.
• Declare provider capabilities and limitations.
• Require explicit authorization for sensitive registrar operations.

Payment and Escrow Plugins

• Integrate supported fiat payment providers.
• Integrate supported cryptocurrency payment services.
• Connect to eligible escrow providers.
• Track provider-specific payment states.
• Support refund and reconciliation workflows.
• Declare applicable fees, restrictions, and regional availability.
• Enforce explicit authorization for payment-related actions.

Advanced Auction Plugins

• Introduce alternative auction formats.
• Support configurable bidding rules.
• Provide specialized bidder eligibility controls.
• Integrate optional auction analytics.
• Preserve auditable bidding and settlement events.

Domain Intelligence Plugins

• Provide optional domain valuation estimates.
• Analyze domain length, language, and naming characteristics.
• Integrate external domain market data.
• Identify similar domain names.
• Provide portfolio analytics and pricing insights.
• Explain the sources and limitations of generated estimates.
• Keep recommendations separate from listing and transaction authorization.

AI Marketplace Assistance Plugins

• Generate draft listing descriptions.
• Suggest categories, keywords, and search metadata.
• Assist buyers with natural-language domain discovery.
• Recommend similar domains.
• Identify potential duplicate listings.
• Analyze portfolio information when explicitly authorized.
• Explain the basis and limitations of generated recommendations.
• Require human approval before publishing material changes or committing to transactions.

AI plugins must not independently change user-defined pricing policies, accept offers, authorize payments, or initiate consequential domain transfers without explicit authorization.

Advanced Privacy Plugins

• Support additional encrypted listing fields.
• Provide confidential portfolio sharing.
• Integrate privacy-preserving identity verification.
• Support selective disclosure of transaction information.
• Minimize retained metadata.
• Provide additional privacy-preserving analytics where feasible.
• Clearly document remaining privacy limitations.

Decentralized Identity and Verification Plugins

• Support compatible decentralized identifiers.
• Validate signed listing claims.
• Integrate third-party verification attestations.
• Support portable reputation credentials.
• Provide cryptographic verification of listing statements.
• Integrate distributed discovery mechanisms.
• Document the trust assumptions of external identity systems.

Cryptographic signatures establish the relationship between a statement and a signing key. They do not independently establish legal ownership or authority to sell a domain.

Federation Plugins

• Connect to compatible independent marketplace instances.
• Exchange public listing information.
• Validate signed listing updates.
• Apply configurable remote-instance trust policies.
• Synchronize eligible listing status changes.
• Provide compatibility checks and interoperability reports.

Notification Plugins

• Integrate supported email delivery services.
• Integrate push notification services.
• Provide optional messaging platform notifications.
• Support configurable notification routing.
• Protect confidential transaction information from accidental disclosure.

Analytics Plugins

• Provide optional market reports.
• Integrate external analytics services.
• Produce portfolio performance reports.
• Analyze listing trends.
• Support privacy-preserving aggregate reporting.
• Enforce explicit data-sharing permissions.

Theme and Interface Plugins

• Customize marketplace appearance.
• Provide alternative navigation and listing layouts.
• Support accessible themes.
• Offer configurable branding for independent deployments.
• Preserve core security, privacy, and accessibility requirements.

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Specification Branding License (SBL)

Standard

• Fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant system
• Copyleft enforced for network deployments
• Required attribution:
  • Roxanne Ardary
  • https://www.roxanneardary.com/

Optional

• Specification Branding License (SBL)
  • Attribution-free commercial deployment
  • Pricing based on scale, usage, and deployment scope
  • https://roxanneardary.com/domari/

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License & Notice Requirements

Domari is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

By contributing to any Open Arsenal project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.

Please note the following:

• All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
• Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
• Domari specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
• The project’s notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments. Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also update notice.md.
• When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
• Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.

For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.

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Notice – Domari

Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.

Contributors

This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.

• Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – October 25, 2026
  Created the repository for Domari. Established the project concept and specification for an open-source, privacy-focused domain trading platform featuring domain listings, ownership verification, end-to-end encrypted communication, secure transactions, and extensible marketplace infrastructure.
• Add other contributors here – [Date]
  [Describe contribution in one sentence]

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License – Domari

This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

Key Points

• You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
• All redistributions, forks, and derivative works or network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
• The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.

For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.