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Outbid.LOL – Namecheap customer – (Germany)

Outbid.LOL is a public leaderboard in which bids determine a company’s position, according to the website’s About page. The website launched on August 19, 2026, and drew more than 1M visitors within 48 hours, according to a press release by the developer. Jonathan Wilke, a Germany-based independent developer, built the website in 3 hours as a side project.

Outbid.LOL overview

  • What it is: According to the website’s About page, Outbid.LOL has no ads, no API keys, and no revenue sharing; a listing’s position is set purely by its cumulative bid.
  • Growth claims:
    • Jonathan posted on X the day after launch that Outbid.LOL drew more than 200,000 visitors and generated $21,499 in its first 24 hours.
    • In an August 22 update on X, he reported that Outbid.LOL had reached roughly 1.15M visitors, $132,000 in total revenue, 867 listed products, and more than 190,000 outbound product clicks.
    • These figures come directly from Jonathan’s own posts rather than an independent audit, and should be treated as founder claims rather than audited numbers.
  • Reported acquisition interest: According to the About page, the website received a $100,000 acquisition offer, which Jonathan declined.

The Outbid.LOL copycat wave

According to internal XYZ Registry statistics, since Outbid.LOL’s launch, over 500 .LOL sites have been spotted riffing on the same pay-to-rank concept: laugh-to-rank, reverse auctions, boards that rank other boards, and more:

  • ClaimRank.LOL: Built by Jim Clyde Monge, Chief Editor at Generative AI Publication, who wrote about Outbid.LOL’s viral growth before launching his own version. According to his own account of the project, he built it as a variation that separates listings by product category, rather than mixing all submissions into a single leaderboard as Outbid.LOL does.
  • lolololololol.LOL: Built by Charlie Clark (founder of a link-in-bio tool for creators called Liinks) — “a leaderboard where the best laugh ranks at the top.”
  • RankWars.LOL: According to its website, this board uses a decaying-value system in which a listing’s position erodes over time unless the holder pays again to defend it, along with a separate board ranking X/Twitter accounts.
  • SiliconCity.LOL: According to the website, the platform lets businesses claim a piece of virtual land, then generates an AI-designed building on it that appears alongside other listings on a shared map.
  • Lamborghini.LOL: According to its website, this project sells permanent ad space on the digital billboard of a real Lamborghini, with bids starting at $1,000 for a share of the screen and a $200,000 cap before the offer closes. The website describes itself as “a tribute to outbid.lol, with a car.”
  • MakeItWorse.LOL: The highest bidder controls the entire website’s visual design, with control shifting to whoever pays more, according to the website. Recent design eras have included “School Computer Lab.”
  • Additional copycats: Other .LOL boards following the same pay-to-rank format have appeared, including Outscore.LOL, Ranky.LOL, GoodBid.LOL, TakeMySpot.LOL, and RankRival.LOL, though we were unable to independently verify the specific mechanics of each.

Words from Jonathan Wilke, developer

We asked Jonathan Wilke about his choice of .LOL. As he told us:

“.LOL felt right because it has this kind of ‘let’s just do it’ character.”

Connect with Outbid.LOL

Why .LOL is a great choice for Outbid.LOL

  • .LOL is short, catchy, and easy to type, built for websites aiming to create a fun and entertaining online presence.
  • .LOL fits a project built to feel lighthearted from the start, the kind of idea a builder can ship quickly.
  • The .LOL extension works as shorthand for this kind of internet novelty. Wilke named the category himself: on X, he called similar websites “attention markets” with Dennis Hegstad even suggesting “the lol economy.”

More .LOL websites from the #GenXYZ community

  • Social media platform OMG.LOL helps people claim a short personal domain and pair it with a profile page, email forwarding, a “statuslog” for quick updates, and other lightweight web tools.
  • Award-winning director, VFX artist, & Saturday Night Live lead digital director Mike Diva uses MikeDiva.LOL to showcase his comedic projects.
  • Cards Against Humanity uses .LOL domains to launch new games:
    • Clams.LOL is the home of Clam-O-Naise® — a tangy spread that comes packed with Cards Against Humanity’s 30-card Clam Pack.
    • PartyMouth.LOL is a CAH game designed to be quick to learn and centers on players shouting colorful phrases together.
    • OutOfLine.LOL is a standalone game and 150-card Cards Against Humanity expansion. Each round challenges players to secretly rank cards along a spectrum while everyone else tries to guess the order.
    • OriginalProngles.LOL is a parody snack brand created by CAH. From fictional chip flavors to over-the-top slogans, Prongles is a surreal comedy experience wrapped in a crunchy aesthetic.
  • Blockchain gaming ecosystem Treasure.LOL focuses on community-driven gaming through MAGIC.
  • Onchain protocol Doppler.LOL supports configurable token launches through price discovery.
  • MilkySoup.LOL is the Warsaw, Poland-based online shop of ceramic artist Mila. According to the website, each piece is hand-built, painted, and kiln-fired as part of a process that takes Mila about a month to complete.
  • Full stack developer Michael Monaghan uses What.LOL to share his work, explore new ideas, and highlight his journey building across startups and investor tools.
  • Open-source software company Techaro uses Techaro.LOL to showcase its bot protection tools, AI consultancy services, and custom software development offerings.
  • Blockchain innovator Astrolabs.LOL develops projects built on the Arbitrum blockchain.
  • Comedy show discovery platform ComedyRadar.LOL unites listings from NY and LA venues in one website.
  • Multi-disciplinary designer Cole Fortson uses Cole.LOL to share his portfolio of design work and personal projects ranging from VR experiences to music.
  • Comedian and producer K. Cheng uses KCheng.LOL as his personal website. He has performed at NBC Stand Up for Diversity, Electric Daisy Carnival, and produces shows like Crazy Funny Asians and The Khmers of Comedy.
  • Technical leader Liv Haven uses Haven.LOL to highlight collaboration, mentorship, and problem-solving.
  • DiscoShrimp.LOL chronicles the decades-long journey of a South Carolina shrimp business turned brand.
  • DesignThinking.LOL turns the world of design and development into comic strip material.
  • Design.LOL is the personal website of NY-based designer Shane Zucker. His work has been featured in top publications like The New York Times & CNN.
  • Multidisciplinary designer Linh Hà uses Linnn.LOL to showcase her work.
  • Josephine Pfeiffer uses Josie.LOL to showcase her background as a cloud native consultant and stick it to bugs everywhere.
  • Stand-up comedian Jason Russell uses JasonRussell.LOL to highlight 36 years of comedy experience.

EZKL.xyz – Squarespace Domains customer – (United States)

Teams working across artificial intelligence and machine learning use .xyz domains to showcase platforms, tools, and services for a growing range of applications. Crypto payment platform AEON.xyz develops payment infrastructure for AI-driven transactions. Women-led hospitality platform AIVATech.xyz builds AI-powered intelligence for hotel operations. Open-source hardware company Foundation.xyz builds dedicated devices for Bitcoin, identity, and AI agent authorization. In this week’s #AIMonday, we’ll introduce you to a platform focused on verifiable AI and zero-knowledge proofs: EZKL.xyz.



Verifiable AI without revealing models or data

EZKL.xyz is the online home of EZKL, a company that builds tools designed to verify that AI models produce outputs correctly, without an outside party needing to access the model or the data it runs on. “Verifiable AI” is an approach to machine learning that prioritizes mathematical proofs and transparency over blind trust. EZKL went through web3 accelerator Beacon’s S24 cohort, which launched in September 2024.1 As of a September 2024 press release announcing EZKL’s admission to Beacon’s accelerator cohort, the company stated it was generating tens of millions of proofs monthly across a range of delegated and decentralized systems.2 EZKL.xyz describes the platform as the only audited library for verifiable AI. EZKL’s tools rely on zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic method that allows one party to demonstrate that a computation was carried out correctly without revealing the underlying model or data itself. As indicated in the EZKL documentation, this approach is designed to apply to three scenarios: running a public model on private data, running a private model on public data, and running a public model on public data where computation is too costly to perform directly on a blockchain.

Multiple approaches to AI verification

The platform’s documentation states that the company offers two core products: the ezkl library and Lilith, an orchestration platform for generating proofs at scale. Lilith was built to address a common constraint, according to the documentation: running larger or more complex models through EZKL can max out the computing power of a developer’s own desktop or laptop. Lilith is described as a compute cluster that developers can access through a command-line interface or REST API to generate proofs remotely, mirroring the experience of running EZKL locally.

The ezkl library converts machine learning models, exported in the ONNX format widely used across the machine learning community, into zero-knowledge circuits built on Halo2, a proving system originally developed by the Electric Coin Company, the team behind Zcash. Developers can access the library through a command-line interface, or through Python, JavaScript, and Rust bindings. The library is free to install and run locally, though the documentation notes that commercial use requires separate licensing. The website describes three ways to generate this verification, depending on a developer’s environment: pure software, designed to run on any device, including browsers and phones, without requiring changes to existing deployments; Intel TEEs (trusted execution environments), aimed at applications that require low latency; and NVIDIA CUDA, specialized kernels designed to detect GPU hardware failures and data corruption directly on-chip.

Founders with academic and machine learning backgrounds

EZKL was co-founded by Jason Morton and Alexander “Dante” Camuto. According to Beacon’s profile, Jason previously worked as a tenured mathematics and statistics professor, received a DARPA Young Faculty Award for quantum-inspired cryptographic algorithms, and served as a principal investigator in DARPA’s original Deep Learning program in 2011. Jason also previously served as Head of Cryptography at Lit Protocol, a multi-party computation-based programmable keypair platform, and earlier in his career worked in M&A investment banking.3

According to Dante’s Beacon profile, he previously founded content delivery company Myel, which was acquired by Protocol Labs, and he holds a PhD in machine learning from the University of Oxford, where he was also a visiting researcher at the Alan Turing Institute.4

EZKL.xyz: A pioneering domain for an AI verification platform

EZKL is building at the intersection of cryptography and machine learning, bringing together concepts and terminology from both fields. That kind of forward-looking work fits naturally with .xyz, a domain built for the next generation of innovation. The .xyz domain’s open, generic nature works across industries, giving a technical platform like EZKL room to define its own identity. EZKL.xyz gives the company a straightforward online identity that reflects its name and its focus on leading-edge technology. You can learn more by following the platform on X/Twitter @ezklxyz and LinkedIn, and by visiting EZKL.xyz.

1. https://www.0xbeacon.com/companies/ezkl
2. https://decrypt.co/249162/following-3-unicorns-in-2-years-web3-accelerator-beacon-launches-its-largest-cohort-to-date
3. https://www.0xbeacon.com/companies/ezkl
4. https://www.0xbeacon.com/companies/ezkl

Yield.xyz – Amazon customer – (United States)

Platforms shaping the future of decentralized technology use .xyz domains to signal their place in the web3 community. Portfolio intelligence platform Otomato.xyz supports real-time alerts for DeFi users. Layer 1 blockchain Initia.xyz offers a framework for building in a multichain future. Blockchain platform N1.xyz supports high-throughput applications and financial use cases. In this week’s #BlockchainThursday, we’ll introduce you to a single API for accessing staking, stablecoin, and DeFi yield across blockchain networks: Yield.xyz.



From wallet infrastructure to yield API

Yield.xyz is a blockchain company that aims to provide a single API for accessing staking, stablecoin, and DeFi yield opportunities across blockchain networks. According to the website, the platform is designed to give businesses, including wallets, custodians, neobanks, and hedge funds, a way to launch yield products without integrating each staking or DeFi venue separately.

The company’s underlying technology was originally built inside Omni, a multichain wallet app, where it handled staking for Omni’s users. According to Yield.xyz’s documentation, the staking infrastructure was worked on and used for roughly two years inside the Omni wallet before becoming its own product. That product launched under the name StakeKit.1 Omni operated as a mobile wallet covering DeFi, staking, and other web3 functions during that period.2 StakeKit later rebranded to Yield.xyz, a change the company describes as reflecting its expansion beyond staking into the broader onchain yield market.3 In June 2025, Yield.xyz secured a $5M strategic funding round backed by venture capital firm Multicoin Capital.4

AgentKit brings AI agents into the yield market

In July 2026, Yield.xyz launched AgentKit on x402, a system that lets software pay small amounts automatically, without a person approving each transaction.5 x402 is developed by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.6 Under x402, a computer program can pay for access to something within the same web request that asks for it, typically using a stablecoin (a cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value, usually matched to the U.S. dollar).7

AgentKit applies that system to Yield.xyz’s yield data. As indicated in the AgentKit announcement, any AI agent holding a cryptocurrency wallet can now discover, enter, rebalance, and monitor more than 3,300 onchain yield opportunities across more than 80 blockchain networks, without needing an API key or a separate onboarding process.8 Each tool includes a limited number of free calls. Once an agent exceeds that limit, its wallet automatically sends a $0.001 USDC payment on Base, Coinbase’s Layer 2 blockchain, before the request goes through.9 According to the AgentKit announcement, Yield.xyz’s infrastructure is used by more than 200 companies, including hardware wallet maker Ledger, mobile crypto wallet Trust Wallet, and hardware wallet maker Trezor.10 The same announcement states that this infrastructure is SOC 2 Type II certified, a security standard commonly required by financial institutions, and non-custodial, meaning Yield.xyz does not hold or control customer funds directly.11

Extending yield access to institutional treasuries

That same July, Yield.xyz joined an integration with R25, an onchain vault infrastructure provider, and Utila, a digital asset operations platform, aimed at giving institutions a way to allocate treasury funds into curated onchain strategies.12 The integration combines Yield.xyz’s API connectivity with a security system from Utila that splits control of a wallet’s private keys across multiple parties, so no single party can move funds alone, a method known as multi-party computation (MPC).13 According to the R25 announcement, this is intended to let institutions deploy funds into vaults without altering their existing compliance processes.14 The first offering available through the integration is Axil Prime Credit, a three-month USDC vault providing exposure to emerging-market consumer credit, curated by risk team Axil.15

Leadership with roots in Omni

Yield.xyz was co-founded by Serafin Lion Engel (CEO), Apurv Mishra (Chief Strategy and Product Officer), and Philip Zudemberg (Chief Technology Officer), who previously co-founded Omni together.16 Before Omni, Serafin founded Datawallet, a consumer data platform, in 2014, according to the Experience section of his LinkedIn profile.17 Apurv is a TED Fellow, inventor, and University of Cambridge graduate with an MPhil in Technology Policy. He has advised the World Economic Forum on emerging technologies and data governance and served on Scientific American’s Emerging Technologies Steering Committee.18 Philip is a member of the Global Shapers Community, a World Economic Forum initiative, according to his GitHub profile.19

The evolution to Yield.xyz

The rebrand reflects Yield.xyz’s expansion beyond staking into the full onchain yield surface, spanning DeFi lending, vaults, RWA, and restaking. To match, the company upgraded its domain from stakek.it to the simplified Yield.xyz, an exact match for its new platform name. The pairing signals innovation and a clear blockchain identity, aligning the company’s rebrand with a domain built to grow alongside it. Short, memorable, and widely adopted by blockchain-focused platforms and crypto startups, .xyz works across industries, giving companies like Yield.xyz a domain that matches the scope of their ambitions in the onchain economy. You can learn more by following the platform on X/Twitter @yield_xyz and by visiting Yield.xyz.

1. https://blockworks.com/news/stakekit-self-custodial-yield-api
2. https://docs.yield.xyz/v1.0/docs/getting-started
3. https://docs.yield.xyz/docs/faqs
4. https://blockworks.co/news/yield-xyz-raise-backend-frankensteins
5. https://www.voiceofalexandria.com/news/national_business_news/yield-xyz-launches-agentkit-on-x402-every-ai-agent-with-a-wallet-can-now-access/article_f49d7d93-5b4e-5bc3-9886-2847b46a1116.html
6. https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/welcome
7. https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/welcome
8. https://www.voiceofalexandria.com/news/national_business_news/yield-xyz-launches-agentkit-on-x402-every-ai-agent-with-a-wallet-can-now-access/article_f49d7d93-5b4e-5bc3-9886-2847b46a1116.html
9. https://www.voiceofalexandria.com/news/national_business_news/yield-xyz-launches-agentkit-on-x402-every-ai-agent-with-a-wallet-can-now-access/article_f49d7d93-5b4e-5bc3-9886-2847b46a1116.html
10. https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/welcome
11. https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/welcome
12. https://www.tradingview.com/news/chainwire:1a716a217094b:0-r25-utila-and-yield-xyz-bring-vault-ecosystem-to-institutional-treasuries/
13. https://www.tradingview.com/news/chainwire:1a716a217094b:0-r25-utila-and-yield-xyz-bring-vault-ecosystem-to-institutional-treasuries/
14. https://www.tradingview.com/news/chainwire:1a716a217094b:0-r25-utila-and-yield-xyz-bring-vault-ecosystem-to-institutional-treasuries/
15. https://www.tradingview.com/news/chainwire:1a716a217094b:0-r25-utila-and-yield-xyz-bring-vault-ecosystem-to-institutional-treasuries/
16. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/steakwallet
17. https://www.linkedin.com/in/serafinlion/
18. https://fellows.ted.com/fellows/299638
19. https://github.com/Philippoes

BraveNewLit.xyz – Instra customer – (Switzerland)

Independent creators use .xyz domains to build platforms that reflect their interests and connect with their communities. Documentary media project TheJiffy.xyz, by former Huffington Post and Yahoo editor James Cave, chronicles life in New York’s Hudson Valley. Inspiration platform Workspaces.xyz showcases creative setups from professionals worldwide. Woman-owned art gallery Imperfecta.xyz presents diverse artistic formats through rotating exhibitions and installations. In this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, we’ll introduce you to an independent platform exploring the design and culture behind speculative fiction: BraveNewLit.xyz.



The broad scope of speculative fiction on Brave New Lit

BraveNewLit.xyz is the online home of Brave New Lit, an independent platform focused on the relationship between design and speculative fiction. As a genre, speculative fiction is a broad umbrella term for fiction that departs from consensus reality, encompassing science fiction, horror, fantasy, and imagined alternate histories or futures. According to the platform’s About page, Brave New Lit publishes essays, interviews, and informal conversations once a year, covering topics like “writing techniques, editing, cover art, typography, illustrations, world-building, character designs, and technology design.”

Exploring BraveNewLit.xyz: Published works and a supporting bibliography

The homepage of BraveNewLit.xyz presents its published works as a row of bold, color-blocked panels, each set with a title in large vertical serif type. The layout evokes a shelf of book spines, with arrows letting visitors page through the full list of essays and recorded conversations. One example, “Invoking Worlds,” is a conversation between founder Sherida Kuffour and speculative fiction writer Ama Josephine Budge, a speculative writer, artist, and pleasure activist whose work takes a queer, decolonial approach to climate colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa. The conversation addresses collaborative creative processes and the physical spaces and routines writers use to develop their work, and is published as both a written transcript and a recorded audio version on SoundCloud. Individual pages also offer a read-only mode, adjustable letter sizing, an option to invert colors, downloadable PDFs, and written descriptions of each contributor’s portrait photo. In the same conversation, Sherida describes accessibility as central to the platform’s design, saying the goal is to ensure that “people of different backgrounds and abilities can adequately read and engage” with what the platform publishes.

Another piece, “Finding Utopia Through Building Community,” is described on the platform as a digital roundtable facilitated by graphic designer Loraine Furter, bringing together Sherida, Iyo Bisseck, Senakirfa Abraham, Hélène Alix Mourrier, Eunice Tchitchiama, and Estelle Ndjop Pom. The website also includes a Bibliography section, organized alphabetically, that lists academic texts, articles, and films referenced across the platform’s published works. According to the About page, Brave New Lit does not run ads, use paywalls, or rely on affiliate marketing, and instead relies on donations and support from partners to fund contributor fees and platform development.

Sherida Kuffour, founder of Brave New Lit

Sherida Kuffour founded Brave New Lit and is also credited on the Colophon page as editor and creative director. According to her personal website, Sherida’s design practice spans user interface and experience design, brand development, and editorial design, built over more than a decade working with startups, agencies, and independent design studios She teaches book design through Dutch design school Design Academy Eindhoven’s MA Contextual Design program and has been a speaker for Dutch cultural organizations, including Writers Unlimited and the Noorderlicht International Photo Festival. Her website states that her graphic design work has been recognized by bodies including the Swiss Design Awards, the Xaver Awards, the Dutch Design Awards, and the Stimuleringsfonds Creative Industries Fund. Sherida’s website also states that she holds an MA in Design for Visual Strategies from Sandberg Instituut and a BA in Graphic Design from Ravensbourne University.1

BraveNewLit.xyz: A distinctive domain for an independent literary platform

Brave New Lit is shaped by a founder whose design work has received recognition from organizations including the Swiss Design Awards and the Dutch Design Awards. Bringing together writers, designers, and editors, the platform explores how design shapes the experience of speculative fiction. The BraveNewLit.xyz domain gives the platform an online identity directly tied to its name, joining a growing community of creative projects, independent publications, and startups using .xyz to build their brands. You can learn more by visiting BraveNewLit.xyz.

1. https://www.sheridakuffour.com/

Mio.xyz – Namecheap customer – (France)

Innovators use .xyz domains to highlight solutions that reflect how AI is reshaping communication, data, and decision-making across industries. Distributed AI data network Hub.xyz builds a system for real-time machine intelligence. AI-enabled marketer platform Myosin.xyz combines go-to-market services with hands-on AI education. AI platform nilGPT.xyz explores privacy-focused AI conversations. In this week’s #AIMonday, we’ll introduce you to an AI coworker designed to live inside Slack and carry out recurring work across a team’s tools: Mio.xyz.



Mio brings an AI coworker into Slack

Mio.xyz is the online home of Mio, a Slack-native AI coworker. According to the website, Mio installs directly into a Slack workspace, where employees work with it by tagging @mio in a channel. Beyond answering questions about the company, it is structured to handle recurring tasks like assembling a weekly brief or getting the team ready for a meeting, and it reaches into more than 3,000 connected tools, including Notion, project tracking tool Linear, Google Workspace, GitHub, and HubSpot. In July 2026, Mio raised $2.2M in pre-seed funding, backed by Casey Caruso, founder and managing partner of frontier tech firm Topology, and Thomas Crow of venture capital firm Fabric Ventures.1

From meeting prep to shipped code

The website outlines a range of tasks that Mio is designed to handle once connected to a team’s tools. For meeting preparation, it gathers what’s relevant beforehand, including CRM notes, emails, and recent Slack threads, then turns it into a single brief the team can review before the call. On the engineering side, it is designed to work through a bug end to end: reviewing the error, putting together a proposed fix, and submitting it as a pull request for the team to check. Mio.xyz also describes scheduled tasks, such as compiling a weekly brief from multiple connected tools and sending it to a user’s Slack DMs, and triaging a workspace to flag what needs attention. A workspace can share a single Mio instance across the team rather than each person running a separate assistant, and sensitive actions wait for explicit approval before Mio carries them out.

Mio founder Arthaud Mesnard

Mio was founded by Arthaud Mesnard. According to Arthaud’s personal website, Arthaud.xyz, he worked as an investor at Geometry, a cryptography-focused investment fund. Prior to Geometry, he founded lending startup Smarto and mental health startup KeepAppy. That focus carries into Mio itself: the company’s Team page describes its objective as “to liberate the web and shift the power away from platforms to users” through applied cryptography and private AI, and its legal entity is registered as Tools for Sovereignty Inc. The framing lines up with the backgrounds of Mio’s own investors, Topology and Fabric Ventures, both of which focus on frontier technology.

Mio.xyz: A short, memorable domain built for global reach

Arthaud Mesnard built Mio after a career spent largely in frontier technology, from a cryptography-focused venture fund to two earlier startups of his own. The Mio.xyz domain gives the Mio brand a short and memorable online identity. As a generic domain ending, .xyz keeps the focus on the Mio name without tying the company to a particular industry, product, or market. Its global accessibility adds to that versatility: .xyz is available in over 200 languages and used in more than 230 countries and territories around the world. For Mio, a platform designed to work across any team’s stack, that adaptable digital identity leaves room for the brand to grow as its products and reach expand. You can learn more by following the platform on LinkedIn @mioxyz and X/Twitter @miodotxyz, and by visiting Mio.xyz.

1. https://pulse2.com/mio-raises-2-2-million-to-build-an-ai-colleague-that-lives-in-slack/