Domain registration agreement

Version 2026-10-22. Published at https://satsdns.com/registration-agreement.

• 1. Who this agreement is between
• 2. The sponsoring registrar
• 3. Names offered
• 4. Registrant contact data
• 5. Email verification
• 6. Letting others use the domain
• 7. Personal data: notice and consent
• 8. WHOIS privacy
• 9. Disclosure of registrant data
• 10. Your promises
• 11. Disputes about the domain
• 12. Transfers and registrant changes
• 13. Renewal, expiry and restore
• 14. Prices and payment
• 15. Refunds
• 16. New-name hold and phishing check
• 17. Abuse and suspension
• 18. Orders placed by an agent or another person
• 19. Changes to this agreement
• 20. Other terms
• 21. Contact

1. Who this agreement is between

• This agreement is between SatsDNS ("SatsDNS", "we", "us"), and the person or organization named as the registrant in a domain order ("the registrant", "you").
• An order is placed by a SatsDNS account ("the buyer"). The buyer may be the registrant, or a person or software agent acting for the registrant. When the buyer is not the registrant, the buyer accepts this agreement on the registrant's behalf (see section 18) and is bound by it as well.
• It applies to every registration, renewal and transfer of a domain name ordered through SatsDNS, together with our terms of service, our acceptable use policy and our privacy notice. For domain registrations, this agreement takes precedence over the terms of service where they differ.
• The registrant is the holder of the domain name. SatsDNS is never the registrant of a domain it sells.

2. The sponsoring registrar

• Every domain registered through SatsDNS is registered with Global Domain Group LLC ("the registrar"), an ICANN-accredited registrar, IANA ID 3956, an affiliate of Dynadot Inc. You can confirm the sponsoring registrar of any domain with ICANN's registration data lookup. The registrar is also named in sponsoring_registrar on every domain status and on /v1/info, and we confirm it on request.
• We are a reseller of the registrar. We are not accredited by ICANN.
• Registrations are subject to the policies of ICANN, of the registry operator of the top-level domain (Verisign for .com and .net, Public Interest Registry for .org) and of the registrar. The registrar's terms of use are at dynadot.com/terms-of-use.

3. Names offered

• Second-level names under .com, .net and .org (for example example.com), in plain letters, digits and hyphens. Internationalized (non-ASCII) names are not offered yet.
• Names the registry prices as premium, names whose registrar price is above US$20 a year, our own and protected names, and names we have blocked are refused before any invoice is made.
• An account can order one new registration or transfer a day, and the same registrant email address can be used for one new registration or transfer a day.
• Registrations and renewals run for 1 to 10 years; a domain cannot be registered more than 10 years ahead. A transfer adds 1 year.

4. Registrant contact data

• You must give accurate and reliable contact details for the registrant, and correct and update them within 7 days of any change during the registration. These are required: the registrant's full name, email address, voice telephone number and postal address (street address, city, postal code and country). Organization, a second address line and state or province are optional.
• If the registrant is an organization, association or corporation, give its name as the organization and the name of a person authorized to act for it as the name.
• Do not use placeholders, invented details, or the details of a privacy or proxy service. Names that are plainly not real are refused. Only plain Latin letters, digits and common punctuation are accepted, so write other scripts in Latin letters.
• Correct the data at any time, free of charge, with PUT /v1/domains/{domain}/registrant. The registrar may email the old and the new registrant to confirm a change.
• Your wilful provision of inaccurate or unreliable information, your wilful failure to update the information within 7 days of a change, or your failure to respond for over 15 days to an inquiry from the registrar (or from us) about the accuracy of the contact details, is a material breach of this agreement and a basis for suspension or cancellation of the registration. A domain suspended or cancelled for this reason is not refunded.
• We do not sell domains to registrants in Cuba, Iran, North Korea or Syria (orders naming these countries are refused), or to anyone we or the registrar are not allowed to deal with under the sanctions laws that apply to us.

5. Email verification

After a registration, a transfer or a change of the registrant's email address, the registrar emails the registrant a link to confirm the address, as ICANN's rules require. If the link is not used within 15 days, the registrar suspends the domain until it is. A domain suspended because the address was not confirmed is not refunded. Every domain status shows registrant_verification with its state and deadline, and the buyer's account gets reminders by Nostr direct message.

6. Letting others use the domain

If you license the use of the domain to someone else, you are still the registrant of record. You remain responsible for giving your own full contact information and for giving and updating accurate technical and administrative contact information adequate to resolve any problems with the domain in time. You accept liability for harm caused by wrongful use of the domain, unless you disclose the current contact information provided by the licensee, and the licensee's identity, within 7 days to a party that gives you reasonable evidence of actionable harm.

7. Personal data: notice and consent

This section is the notice that ICANN's rules require for every new or renewed registration. Our own handling of the data is also described in the privacy notice.

What is collected, and what is required

• Required: the registrant's full name, email address, telephone number and postal address (street, city, postal code, country), and the domain's nameservers. Optional: organization, second address line, state or province. Without the required data a domain cannot be registered.

Why it is used

• To register, renew, transfer and manage the domain; to contact the registrant (for example for email verification, transfers and disputes); to meet ICANN and registry requirements, including registration data services (RDAP/WHOIS), data escrow and data retention; to handle abuse and to comply with the law and with decisions of courts, authorities and dispute-resolution providers.
• The registrar's own privacy policy, Part II of its terms of use, lists the purposes for which the registrar processes the data. They include providing its services, collecting registration data, compliance with ICANN requirements, transfer of registration data to the registry operator, its back-end service provider, the data escrow agent, ICANN contractual compliance and the emergency back-end registry operator, public registration data services, disclosure of non-public registration data to third parties, ICANN and registry data retention, communication with you, troubleshooting, abuse and spam detection, site and usage statistics, targeted marketing, training and improving the accuracy of automated processing methods, compliance with laws and with decisions of courts, authorities and dispute-resolution providers, and establishing or defending its legal rights. Processing may include automated methods and manual reviews of them.

Who receives it

• SatsDNS, only to pass it to the registrar (see what we keep: we delete our copy once the registrar has it).
• The registrar, Global Domain Group LLC, and its affiliate Dynadot Inc, both in California, United States.
• The registry operator of the top-level domain and those who receive the data from it, its back-end service provider, the registrar's and registry's data escrow agents, ICANN and the emergency back-end registry operator.
• Parties to whom the data must or may be disclosed under section 9, ICANN policy or the law, for example dispute-resolution providers, courts and authorities.

The data may be processed and stored outside the country where you live, including in the United States, where it is subject to the laws there.

How to see and correct it

• GET /v1/domains/{domain} shows the registrant's name, email address, organization and country, read from the registrar. Correct the data with PUT /v1/domains/{domain}/registrant.
• To ask for all the data, for its correction, for restriction of processing or for erasure, write to us (see contact) or to the registrar's data protection officer at DataProtectionOfficer@dynadot.com. The registrar may decline parts of such a request as its privacy policy allows, for example where it cannot confirm your identity or must keep the data to comply with ICANN or the law.

Consent and protection

• You consent to the processing of the registrant data described in this section.
• If the data you give includes personal data of anyone else (for example an organization's contact person), you confirm that you have given them notice equivalent to this section and obtained their consent equivalent to yours.
• We will not process the registrant data in a way incompatible with the purposes and limits described in this section, and we take reasonable precautions to protect it from loss, misuse, unauthorized access or disclosure, alteration or destruction. Under its terms of use, the registrar likewise does not process personal data in a way incompatible with the purposes and limits in its privacy policy, and protects it with appropriate security measures.

8. WHOIS privacy

Every domain sold through SatsDNS has the registrar's privacy service turned on, at no charge, and it cannot be turned off. The public registration data (RDAP/WHOIS) then shows the privacy service's details instead of the registrant's. The service is provided by the registrar, subject to ICANN's specification on privacy and proxy registrations. SatsDNS runs no privacy or proxy service of its own. The registrant's data stays with the registrar and can still be disclosed as described in section 9, in the registrar's privacy policy and under ICANN policy.

9. Disclosure of registrant data

• The registrar receives and answers registration data disclosure requests under its own privacy policy and ICANN policy.
• We also disclose data where the law, a court order or an ICANN policy requires it.

10. Your promises

• To the best of your knowledge and belief, neither the registration of the domain nor the way it is used, directly or indirectly, infringes the legal rights of anyone else.
• You will not use the domain for malware, botnets, phishing, piracy, trademark or copyright infringement, fraudulent or deceptive practices, counterfeiting or any other activity contrary to applicable law, or otherwise against our acceptable use policy.
• You indemnify and hold harmless the registry operator of the top-level domain and its directors, officers, employees and agents from and against all claims, damages, liabilities, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees and expenses) arising out of or related to your registration of the domain.

11. Disputes about the domain

• Disputes about a registration with a party claiming rights in a trademark or service mark are handled under ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) and the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS). You agree to take part in such a proceeding if one is brought about your domain. We carry out, and the registrar implements, the decisions made under them.
• Your registration is subject to suspension, cancellation or transfer under any ICANN specification or policy, or under any registrar or registry procedure not inconsistent with one, to correct mistakes by the registrar or the registry operator in registering the name, or to resolve disputes about the name.
• For the adjudication of disputes concerning or arising from the use of the domain, you submit, without prejudice to other potentially applicable jurisdictions, to the jurisdiction of the courts of your domicile and of the place where the registrar is located (San Mateo County, California, United States).

12. Transfers and registrant changes

Transfers between registrars follow ICANN's Transfer Policy.

• Transfer away: POST /v1/domains/{domain}/auth-code gives the transfer code at once and unlocks the domain, free of charge (with an account this needs a fresh signature). It is not available within 60 days of the domain's registration or of its transfer to us. The code is not stored by us. We do not withhold it because of a payment dispute. We withhold it only while we are acting on a confirmed case of phishing, malware or child sexual abuse material on the domain (409 abuse_hold).
• Transfer to us: order domain_transfer with the transfer code from the current registrar; it adds 1 year to the registration. The domain must be unlocked at the current registrar, and registrars may refuse a transfer within 60 days of a registration or of a previous transfer. A failed transfer is refundable (see section 15).
• Under the registrar's terms, a domain transferred within 45 days of its expiry date may have its new expiry date reduced by 1 year.
• Registrant changes are free; see section 4.
• Registrar lock: PUT /v1/domains/{domain}/lock. Turning it off, removing DNSSEC records and replacing the domain token need a fresh signature when you use an account.

13. Renewal, expiry and restore

• Nothing renews automatically. Neither we nor the registrar renew a domain unless you pay a renewal order (domain_renew, 1 to 10 years).
• Notices: we send Nostr direct messages to the account that owns the domain 30, 7 and 1 days before the expiry date and at expiry. These messages go to the buyer's Nostr key, not to the registrant's email address; a buyer acting for a registrant must pass them on. Not receiving a notice does not extend the registration.
• At expiry the registrar puts the domain on hold and changes its nameservers. The domain stops resolving: websites, email and anything else using it stop working until it is renewed. A zone hosted with us is not deleted by the domain's expiry, but it is not reachable while the domain is on hold.
• Renewal after expiry: until 25 days after the expiry date, a domain can still be renewed in the dashboard or through the API at the normal renewal price.
• Restore: after that, a renewal must be requested from us by hand (see contact). The registrar charges a fee for a restore, which is added to the price. We quote the amount in sats before you pay. A restore is possible only while the registrar and the registry still allow it, and it is not refundable once done.
• If the domain is not renewed or restored: under the registrar's terms, the domain may be auctioned or transferred to another registrant from the end of the first 30 days after expiry. If it is not, the registrar deletes it about 40 days after the expiry date. The registry then holds it for a 30-day redemption period, during which only a restore is possible, and then releases it for anyone to register.

14. Prices and payment

• Domains are sold in sats through account orders (POST /v1/account/orders). List prices are on the pricing page. Each order gets its own quote, based on the list price, the registrar's current price and the current bitcoin price; it is never below the list price for that period (after any multi-year discount shown on the pricing page). The amount on the invoice is the price you pay. "pay": "check" returns the quote without creating an invoice.
• Pay the invoice over Lightning (valid 15 minutes) or on-chain (pay the exact amount within 24 hours; the order counts as paid and runs after 3 confirmations). Lightning routing fees and on-chain network fees are paid by the payer.
• Just before buying, we check the name and the registrar's price again. If the name was taken meanwhile, or our cost rose by more than 2%, the order fails and the payment is refundable.
• If our balance at the registrar is too low when your paid order runs, the order waits for up to 24 hours (its status says "waiting for funding"). If it cannot be completed in that time, it fails and the payment is refundable.
• The optional hosting add-on ("host_zone": true) adds a hosted zone on our nameservers for 1 year, with its DNSSEC record set at the registry for you. The hosted zone then follows our terms of service (renewal, grace and expiry of zones), separately from the domain.
• Registrant changes, transfer codes, nameserver, DNSSEC and lock changes are free.

15. Refunds

• Registrations, renewals and transfers that went through are final. This includes domains later suspended or cancelled because the email address was not confirmed, the contact data was inaccurate, for abuse, under a UDRP or URS decision, or by the registry or the registrar.
• Refundable on request: a paid order that failed before the domain was registered, renewed or transferred, for example because the name was taken meanwhile, the price rose by more than 2%, the registrar refused or cancelled the order, our registrar balance stayed too low for 24 hours, or a transfer failed. If the registrar reports a problem with an order, we review it. If after 3 days the domain is still not registered and the registrar's records show that it returned the money, the order fails and becomes refundable.
• Late or short payments, and overpayments, are handled as for every account order in the terms of service.
• Ask with POST /v1/account/refunds or in the dashboard. Each refund is reviewed and paid by hand, from 1,000 sats, with the network fee deducted. Amounts below 1,000 sats cannot be refunded.

16. New-name hold and phishing check

A new registration starts on our nameservers and stays there for about 3 hours. At the end of that hold we check the name against public phishing lists. If it is not listed, the nameservers you asked for are set (or the hosted zone goes live). If it is listed, the domain is flagged for our review and your nameservers are not set until the review is done. Nameserver changes asked for during the hold are queued.

17. Abuse and suspension

• Our acceptable use policy applies to every domain sold through SatsDNS. Abuse reports are handled as described on the abuse page; we respond within 5 business days.
• If a domain is used for abuse, we may suspend it: we point it at our nameservers (so it stops resolving to your servers) and withdraw any zone hosted with us. We may also ask the registrar to place a hold on the domain or to delete it. The registrar and the registry may act on their own under their policies and ICANN policy.
• A domain suspended or cancelled for abuse is not refunded.

18. Orders placed by an agent or another person

Every registration and transfer order must carry "attestation": true (in the dashboard: the ticked box with this statement), which stands for this statement by the buyer:

"I am authorised by the named registrant to register this domain for them, and the registrant accepts the registration agreement."

• By sending it, the buyer confirms that the registrant has authorized the order and accepts this agreement, and that the buyer has given the registrant the notice in section 7 and obtained the registrant's consent.
• We record the statement, the version of this agreement and the time with the order.
• If the buyer was not authorized, the buyer is responsible for the consequences, and the domain may be suspended or cancelled.

19. Changes to this agreement

We may change this agreement. Each version has its date at the top of this page and in /v1/info. An order is governed by the version in force when it was placed; each order records that version.

20. Other terms

Everything not covered here, including warranties and limitation of liability, is as in our terms of service. Section 11 and the other terms that ICANN policy requires apply in every case.

21. Contact

• Questions, restore requests, refund requests and privacy requests: see the contact page (Nostr direct message).
• Abuse reports: abuse@satsdns.com or the other ways on the abuse page.

These pages are written in plain language and are not legal advice.