Founder of company has a close tie to a longtime fixture in the domain industry.

TLD1 LLC, a new company based in South Carolina, announced today that it applied for two top level domains in the 2026 TLD expansion round: .etc. and .bewell. It chose .joinus and .whatsnew as replacement strings.

Serial entrepreneur John Alagna founded the company. He has built and sold companies in retail, web services, and insurance. His most recent exit was selling Carolina Heritage Insurance in 2024.

If the last name looks familiar, that’s because John is the brother of domain industry veteran Joe Alagna, who is advising TLD1.

TLD1 will use the it.com Domains registry service provider that Joe works for. The company said it has chosen DNSSEC services from Netnod, data escrow with DENIC Services, and abuse monitoring by iQ Global.

The domains are generic and intended to operate as open TLDs.

Link Freedom Group has also announced an application for .etc.