Nepal's Domain Rules Quietly Shape Its Internet

I own four domains. Three end in .com. One ends in .com.np. Getting each one was a completely different experience, and the difference taught me something about Nepal’s internet that no policy paper ever did.

When I wanted niguro.com, I searched, I paid, and I owned it in ten minutes. When I wanted yukesh.com.np, I filled in a form, gathered my citizenship papers, and waited. Same internet, two different countries of process.

The .com.np desk

Anyone in the world can register a .com in minutes with a credit card. A .com.np is free, but it asks who you are. An individual shows citizenship. A company shows its registration papers. The registry checks, and then you wait.

I am not complaining. There is a logic to it: Nepal’s corner of the internet stays Nepali. Squatters cannot grab thousands of names overnight. When you see a .com.np address, it means something. Someone real, verified, stands behind it.

But friction is friction. Every form, every photocopy, every waiting day is a small tax on the impulse to build. Somewhere in Nepal right now, a student has an idea for a website, and the idea dies at the paperwork step. We will never count those. That is the quiet cost of the system, and it is paid in ideas that never got a chance.

Why my products live on .com

Niguro, Sisnoo, inciding. All .com. When you are building something you hope the world will use, you do not want your front door to require a Nepali citizenship card. A .com is permissionless. Search, pay, build, done before lunch.

There is a practical side too. The whole global plumbing, payments, DNS, transfers, speaks .com fluently. I have already fought enough battles with banks and payment gateways to get paid from abroad. I did not need another battle at the domain counter. One front is enough.

Why my name lives on .com.np

yukesh.com.np is different. It is me. A .com.np says: this person is really here, in Nepal, verified by a registry that checked his papers. I think Nepali readers trust it a little more because of that. Trust is built from small things like this.

It is also a statement. I build in Nepal, from Nepal. My name sitting on Nepal’s own domain is the least I can do.

Three rules I follow now

If the product might leave Nepal, buy the .com first. Do not let paperwork slow down day one. Speed matters more than symbolism when you are starting.
If it is Nepali at its core, take the .com.np too. It is free. Think of it as your proof of address on the internet. Even if you never use it, nobody else can squat on your name there.
Never build on a domain you do not fully control. A domain rented from a platform, a subdomain someone else owns, a name tied to an app store: all of it is rented land. I learned that lesson watching platforms switch off overnight. Your domain is the one address on the internet that should be truly yours.

Domain policy is internet policy

We talk about digital sovereignty in big words: data centers, search engines, platforms. But sovereignty also lives in small boring places, like a domain registration form.

Every rule about who can own a name is a rule about who gets to build. Nepal got the identity part right. The .com.np system keeps the namespace honest, and that honesty has value. What it should fix is the waiting. Keep the citizenship check, kill the queue. A verified digital identity should take minutes, not days.

Small frictions compound. The countries that win the internet are the ones where a teenager can go from idea to a live website before dinner. Nepal is close. The paperwork is the gap.

The cheapest political decision you will make

A domain name is the cheapest part of any product I have built, and somehow the most political. It decides who you are allowed to be on the internet before you have written a single line of code.

So here is my advice, free like a .com.np: buy the .com, claim the .com.np, and build like both of them are yours. Because once you start building, the domain is the one thing nobody should be able to take from you.

Nepal’s Domain Rules Quietly Shape Its Internet