nics.dev docs: delegation, records, offers and the sale

What nics.dev is

nics.dev puts a for-sale page on your own domain, so you can sell it yourself. Point your nameservers at it and you get a clean page with a make-offer form, relayed offer threads, and bot-filtered visitor stats. No ads, no marketplace. It’s free while in beta.

Nothing about who owns your domain changes. You delegate DNS, and you can undelegate it in a minute.

Step 1: add the domain

Add it in the portal, one at a time or as a pasted list. Adding a domain creates its DNS zone before you change anything at your registrar. That way the zone is already answering by the time the delegation takes effect, which is what registries like DENIC check for before they accept it.

Step 2: point the nameservers

The two nameservers are:

ns1.nics.dev
ns2.nics.dev

Every registrar phrases this the same way underneath: Domains → the domain → nameservers → use custom nameservers → replace what is there with our two names → save. Registrar interfaces change often, so the labels below are signposts rather than instructions to follow literally.

• TransIP: the domain’s overview page has a DNS/nameserver section with a choice between TransIP’s own nameservers and your own; choose your own and enter the two names.
• Porkbun: the domain list has an authoritative nameservers control per domain; replace the Porkbun defaults.
• Namecheap: the domain’s management screen has a nameservers dropdown; switch it from “Namecheap BasicDNS” to custom DNS and enter the two names.
• GoDaddy: the domain settings page has a nameservers section with a change/“I’ll use my own nameservers” option.
• Cloudflare Registrar: some registrars restrict which nameservers a domain may use, and Cloudflare Registrar is one to check before you plan a move. If your account doesn’t offer custom nameservers for the domain, you can’t delegate it from there, and you would have to transfer the domain to a registrar that allows it.

Only the nameserver records change. No transfer is initiated, no authorization code is issued, and no lock is triggered.

Step 3: what happens next, on its own

• The delegation check. We resolve the domain’s nameservers at the registry every few minutes. When both of ours appear, the listing becomes active.
• The certificate. A free certificate is issued for the domain and its www name. Until it is ready the page is not served over HTTPS, which is usually a matter of minutes.
• Monitoring. If the delegation later drifts away, say a registrar reset or a colleague changing DNS, you get an email. So do stuck certificates and unusual traffic.

What we serve in your zone

The zone we create for a listing contains the records that make the page work: the apex and www pointed at our edge, and the nameserver records themselves. On top of that you can add your own A, AAAA, CNAME, TXT, MX, SRV and CAA records in the portal.

Your records are additive and ours are managed. Reconciliation only ever adds, updates or deletes records of those seven types. It never touches the records that make the for-sale page resolve, and it never touches your MX and TXT records. In practice this means your mail keeps working: Google Workspace, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and every ownership-verification TXT record survive the delegation, as long as you carry them over.

What a buyer sees

One HTML document with one inline stylesheet: the domain name, the seller’s description, a price or a make-offer form, and a small “hosted by nics.dev” line. No ads, no third-party scripts, no redirects, no outbound links except to nics.dev, no cookies and therefore no consent banner.

The page is identical for every visitor of a given domain. There’s no user-agent, IP or country conditional content, because serving different content to crawlers than to people is the signal that gets parked domains flagged. Its language (English, Dutch or German) is a per-domain setting the seller chooses, not something read from the visitor’s browser.

Visits are logged server-side. The raw IP address is never stored: what is recorded is a hash of the address with a daily salt, plus the user agent, the referrer if the browser sent one, and the country the edge reports. Bot classification starts from the user agent and a visit is promoted to “human” when the page’s small beacon runs; the absence of a beacon is itself a signal. Details are on the privacy page.

The offer thread

A submitted offer creates a lead and its first message, and emails you. From there:

• You reply, counter, accept or decline from the portal.
• The buyer replies, counters, accepts or declines from a signed link in their email.
• Every turn is relayed. Mail goes out from nics.dev with no reply-to header, so the buyer never learns your address and you never have to hand it out. The buyer’s own reply channel is their signed link, not an email header.

Closing a deal

When an offer is accepted the agreed amount is frozen on the thread, and the thread shows what is left to do:

1. Payment. nics.dev never holds funds. The thread can hand off to a third-party escrow service, recording the link and reference; the money goes between buyer and seller, or through that service, never through us.
2. Transfer. The thread shows a checklist for the domain’s extension: registrar push at the same registrar, an authorization code for a gTLD, a SIDN token for .nl, a DENIC AuthInfo code for .de, an EURid code for .eu. The mechanics are in auth code vs registrar push and the per-extension guides.
3. Mark as sold. The listing goes off the market, the buyer gets the transfer instructions for that extension, and any other open offers on the domain are told it has sold and closed.

The domain’s page then says it found a new owner, for as long as the domain still points at us.

Leaving

Point the nameservers back at your registrar or host and the page stops resolving within the hour. Delete the domain in the portal and its stored visit logs go with it. There is nothing to cancel and no card on file.

Reporting a listing

Trademark complaints, phishing and anything else that should not be on a for-sale page go to abuse@nics.dev; see the abuse page for what to include and for the UDRP and .eu ADR pointers. Privacy requests go to privacy@nics.dev.

Questions

Do I transfer the domain to nics.dev?

No. The domain stays in your registrar account, in your name, on your card. You change its nameserver records to ns1.nics.dev and ns2.nics.dev, and that is the whole handover.

How long does delegation take to be picked up?

We resolve the parent nameservers every few minutes. Once the registry shows both of our names the listing flips to active and a certificate is issued for the domain and its www name. Registry and DNS propagation mean this can be minutes or a few hours, depending on the registrar.

Which DNS records can I keep?

A, AAAA, CNAME, TXT, MX, SRV and CAA. They are additive: the records that make the for-sale page work are managed by us and are never touched by yours.

How do I leave?

Point the nameservers back at your registrar or host and the page stops resolving within the hour. Delete the domain in the portal and its stored visit logs go with it.