Liquidity Without a Central Exchange in the IPv4 Market

Summary

A central exchange is one way to concentrate bids, offers and execution, but it is not the only way to create liquidity. Foreign exchange, corporate bonds and other negotiated markets show that dealers, requests for quotes, reference data and post-trade reporting can support credible prices outside a single order book.
IPv4 liquidity has several dimensions: the time required to find a counterparty, the difference between a credible bid and offer, the quantity that can move without a large price concession, the probability that an agreed transfer completes, and the operational condition of the block after registration. A rising transfer count measures only part of that system.
RIR transfer logs establish recognised changes and are indispensable to custody history, but they generally do not disclose contract price, failed negotiations, broker spread, escrow terms, reputation remediation or the interval between commercial agreement and registration. Broker reports add useful price evidence while covering only their own observed business.
Standardisation should begin with the product and the event: prefix size, fragmentation, registry path, agreement status, reputation condition, route and RPKI readiness, contract date, price basis, services, fees and completion milestones. A price without those attributes can make unlike transactions look comparable.
Settlement can become safer through common confirmations, verified authority, independent escrow, explicit conditions, signed registry receipts and coordinated operational handover. None of those measures requires a registry to decide why a buyer wants addresses or whether the negotiated price is economically wise.
Number Resource Society can make a constructive, bounded contribution by convening voluntary data standards, accrediting methods rather than prices, publishing coverage and uncertainty, and supporting independent aggregation. Its own advocacy for holder control and monetisation makes conflict safeguards and outside review essential.

Liquidity is coordination, not architecture

The easiest way to imagine a market is a screen. Buyers submit bids, sellers submit offers, the highest and lowest prices meet, and every entity sees the result. That image is powerful because it combines search, price discovery, execution and publication in one place. It is also a poor description of many important markets.

Corporate bonds have long traded through dealers and bilateral negotiation. Foreign exchange combines direct dealing, electronic request-for-quote systems, inter-dealer venues and internal dealer pools. Physical commodities often use private contracts and price-reporting agencies. Real estate uses brokers, listings, comparables, diligence and local settlement. These markets vary enormously in regulation and scale, but they make the same institutional point: a market does not need one compulsory exchange to produce usable prices.

It does need coordination. A buyer must know what is being offered. A seller must be able to identify serious demand. Both need a common language for quantity and quality. They need confidence that an accepted price can turn into a completed transfer. They need enough evidence from other transactions to challenge an unreasonable quote. If those functions are weak, an order book alone will not create depth. It will display a thin and possibly misleading surface.

IPv4 exchange is naturally negotiated. A /16 is not simply 65,536 identical units detached from history. The buyer may care about aggregation, registry region, transfer eligibility, route reputation, geolocation, reverse DNS, RPKI administration, previous use, timing and whether the seller can prove authority. The seller may need confidentiality, a delayed handover, partial continued use or a closing tied to a corporate event. Large blocks are infrequent, and one entity's requirements may not match another's stock.

The central question is therefore not how to force every address through one venue. It is how to make a fragmented market comparable, contestable and settleable. Liquidity is the quality of that coordination.

Five tests describe liquidity better than a transfer count

Market commentary often uses liquidity as a synonym for activity. More completed transfers are called more liquidity; fewer transfers are called less. Activity matters, but the concept is wider.

The first test is search time. How long does a qualified buyer take to locate a seller with a suitable block, and how long does a seller take to receive a credible bid? Search includes the time spent distinguishing actual inventory from stale listings and serious buyers from unfunded inquiries.

The second is price cost. What difference separates the best credible buying interest from the lowest credible selling interest for a defined class of block? In an OTC market, that difference can be hidden inside broker spreads, separate commissions, service fees or divergent quotes delivered to different customers. It cannot be measured from an advertised asking price alone.

The third is depth. How many addresses can be transferred near the prevailing price before the next buyer demands a discount or the next seller asks a premium? A market can show frequent /24 trades while providing little capacity for a holder that must sell a /12. A price series dominated by small blocks does not establish liquidity for large ones.

The fourth is completion probability and time. A signed bargain with a low chance of registry recognition is not equivalent to cash-settled liquidity. The market must distinguish commercial agreement, submission, approval, escrow release and operational handover. Predictable completion can support a tighter price even where formal approval takes longer than an uncertain process.

The fifth is post-transfer usability. A newly registered block can still carry routing, reputation, geolocation and customer-acceptance problems. If buyers regularly incur uncertain remediation, they reduce bids or avoid categories they cannot assess. A liquid registration market with poor operational handover is only partly liquid.

No public global dataset supplies all five measures for the complete population of IPv4 negotiations. RIR logs show valuable completed events. Brokers observe portions of search, quote and settlement. Buyers and sellers know their own abandoned cases. Escrow providers see funded bargains but not every direct transaction. Any claim about global liquidity must therefore state which dimension and which observed population it measures.

The market has been OTC since its recognised beginning

ARIN's 2010 consultation for a transfer listing service described three groups: organisations seeking address space, authorised holders that might make space available, and facilitators. The service was designed to help implement specified-recipient transfers. That was already an OTC architecture. The registry offered introductions and a recognised transfer route; the parties and facilitators supplied negotiation.

The widely reported 2011 Nortel sale to Microsoft supplied a public transaction marker. Court records disclosed 666,624 IPv4 numbers and USD 7.5 million of consideration. ARIN's involvement concerned the registration relationship and its policies. The estate, buyer, court and advisers handled the commercial bargain. The event demonstrated a price without creating a continuous exchange.

Inter-regional transfers then widened the possible counterparty set. ARIN's inter-RIR policy became effective in 2012. RIPE NCC and APNIC developed their own transfer procedures and publication practices. Brokers built inventories of willing sellers and qualified buyers across regions. Private data services began publishing price observations.

The resulting market is not one pool. It is a network of overlapping pools. A broker may have exclusive seller mandates. A large buyer may run a private request for proposals. A holder may approach several facilitators. A transfer platform may show auction lots. A direct buyer may rely on advisers and escrow. An RIR may process the final recognised change without seeing the purchase price. A lease may satisfy demand without any permanent transfer at all.

This history matters because centralisation is not a missing original design. Bilateral search and registry recognition developed together. Reform should improve the functions that entities actually use rather than assume that legitimacy begins when every negotiation moves onto one screen.

Price discovery begins by defining the thing being priced

The phrase “price per address” compresses too much. Before comparing two prices, a market-data service should establish that their numerators and denominators mean the same thing.

The denominator may be the number of addresses in the transferred prefix, the number accepted by the registry, the number delivered free of existing use, or the number included in a broader corporate transaction. A /16 contains 65,536 addresses mathematically, but a contract may include services, delayed release, a retained lease or multiple prefixes with different conditions. Dividing total consideration by nominal address count can misstate the economic unit.

The numerator may be the gross contract price, seller net proceeds, buyer all-in cost or an allocated value. Broker commission, legal work, escrow, RIR fees, taxes, reputation remediation, financing and managed handover can be included or excluded. A cash price denominated in one currency on the agreement date should not be compared with another converted at the closing date without disclosure.

Time matters. Parties can agree a price months before a registry records the transfer. If the market moves during that interval, a series keyed to the publication date attributes an old bargain to a new market. At minimum, records should distinguish quote date, commercial agreement date, registry submission date, recognised transfer date and funds-release date.

Product attributes matter just as much. Prefix length, total quantity, fragmentation, source and destination RIR, legacy or agreement status, transfer path, route history, reputation, geolocation, RPKI state, reverse-DNS readiness, encumbrances and continued use can all affect value. Two /20s are not proven substitutes merely because they contain equal address counts.

A credible price record therefore states its basis. “USD per registered address, gross of seller commission, contract signed in June, for one clean ARIN /18 with no retained use” is a price observation. “IPv4 is at USD 25” is an assertion whose comparability cannot be tested.

Four evidence classes should never be collapsed into one line

OTC price formation uses several kinds of information. Each answers a different question.

An indication expresses interest. A seller may say it is considering offers above a level. A broker may circulate an expected range. A buyer may describe a budget. The statement can be useful, but it is not necessarily executable and may change after diligence.

An executable quote commits a party, within stated size, time and conditions, to transact if accepted. It should identify whether fees are included, whether the quote depends on a particular registry path, and what authority or funding evidence remains outstanding. A quote that can be withdrawn at will after seeing the other side's response is less informative.

An agreed transaction records a contract or binding confirmation. It establishes stronger commercial evidence but may remain conditional on registry approval, court consent, financing or delivery. It should not be described as completed until the relevant conditions are satisfied.

A completed transaction has passed the declared settlement milestones. Even then, the record must say whether completion means contract closing, registry update, funds release or operational handover. The most useful series retains every milestone rather than replacing the earlier dates with one final date.

Market reports often mix asking prices, auction outcomes, accepted broker bids and closed transfers because each source sees a different part of the process. That creates false precision. A high asking price can sit beside a lower completed price without proving a market move. An auction bid can fail qualification. A registry record can complete without public consideration because it arose from a reorganisation rather than a sale.

The first standard for liquidity is therefore a label. Every published number should declare its evidence class. Readers can then use indications for current sentiment, executable quotes for spread analysis, agreements for commercial activity and completions for settlement evidence without pretending they are interchangeable.

Brokers create liquidity by carrying information and risk

It is tempting to describe a broker as a toll collector standing between a willing buyer and seller. In a thin market, the intermediary can perform substantive economic work.

A broker searches for off-market supply, identifies buyers likely to qualify, groups or separates blocks, translates different price expectations and keeps negotiations alive when one side will not reveal its identity. Repeat activity gives the broker knowledge about which advertised lots are real, which buyers fund promptly, how long different registry paths take and what defects reduce bids.

Some intermediaries operate as agents and earn a disclosed commission. Others may buy as principal, carry inventory and resell. A principal supplies immediacy: the seller receives a price without waiting for the ultimate user, while the intermediary bears price, funding and remarketing risk. That service can deepen liquidity, but it also makes the observed resale price different from the seller's proceeds.

Broker knowledge can reduce adverse selection. A buyer facing an unknown seller worries that the block is offered because of a defect. A seller facing an unknown buyer worries about financing, qualification and misuse. A reputable intermediary can screen both. Standard diligence makes that screening transferable rather than dependent on personality.

The same concentration of information can create power. A dual agent may know both reservation prices. A broker publishing a market index may have an interest in the level shown. Exclusive mandates can hide competing supply. Principal inventory can create an incentive to present selected trades as the market. These are reasons for disclosure and method governance, not reasons to abolish intermediation.

Liquidity policy should make broker performance more comparable: agency or principal capacity, fee basis, exclusive interest, quote validity, completion rate for the broker's own accepted mandates, median milestone times and the method used for any published price series. The denominator must be the broker's defined cases, not “the global market.”

Multi-dealer requests can create competition without one order book

A buyer does not need a central exchange to obtain competing prices. It can send a standard request for quote to several qualified intermediaries or sellers. The request defines quantity, acceptable prefix structure, registry destination, required status, delivery window, reputation conditions, settlement form and whether the buyer will accept substitutes.

Standardisation matters because vague requests invite incomparable responses. One dealer may quote a clean registered transfer with fees included. Another may quote a block subject to history remediation and add commission later. A third may offer a lease. The lowest number is not necessarily the lowest acquisition cost.

A disciplined process gives every respondent the same information and deadline. It records the time each response arrived, its validity period, conditions and capacity. It separates firm quotes from indications. It allows the buyer to select on all-in cost, certainty and delivery rather than headline price alone.

Sellers can use the same architecture through a controlled tender. They can seek bids for one portfolio, require funding and qualification evidence, and preserve a fallback if the highest bid cannot settle. A second-price rule is not required. What matters is that bidders understand the selection method and cannot revise opportunistically after seeing competitors' terms.

Electronic tools can improve this process without becoming a monopoly venue. A request can reach multiple brokers. Responses can remain confidential until execution. A common confirmation can move to escrow. The final event can be reported to an independent data utility. Competition occurs at the point of quote, while data become comparable after the event.

This structure resembles parts of the electronic OTC fixed-income and foreign-exchange markets. It preserves bilateral choice and bespoke terms while making price shopping easier. The lesson is functional, not legal: a market can aggregate access without compelling every transaction onto one matching engine.

Post-trade transparency is not the same as exchange trading

FINRA's Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine provides a useful institutional comparison. TRACE collects and disseminates information about eligible fixed-income transactions executed over the counter. FINRA explains that TRACE has no execution capability and does not accept quotations. The bonds can remain dealer-traded while executed prices become visible.

That separation is important for IPv4. A reporting utility could receive completed transaction data without becoming the place where parties negotiate. It could standardise event fields, remove duplicates, identify related-party cases for separate treatment, publish delayed aggregates and preserve confidential evidence for audit. Brokers could continue to compete on search, advice, inventory and settlement.

The comparison also warns against copying a mature securities regime wholesale. FINRA members have legal reporting duties, common security identifiers and a regulator with surveillance authority. IPv4 transfers involve varied jurisdictions, private parties and resources whose registration is administered through five regional systems. No global body currently possesses equivalent statutory power.

Nor is every TRACE field suitable. Public identification of an IPv4 buyer and exact price can reveal network expansion, bargaining strategy or security-sensitive timing. A huge transfer can move the apparent benchmark if disclosed immediately. A small number of observations can permit counterparties to infer a confidential transaction even when names are removed.

The transferable principle is bounded post-trade evidence. Executed observations are more reliable than rumours. Common identifiers and timestamps reduce double counting. Delays and quantity bands can protect large transactions. Corrections should remain visible. Coverage should be published. A transaction repository can improve an OTC market without turning itself into the market.

Transparency must be calibrated to depth

Maximum disclosure is not automatically maximum liquidity. A seller with a large block may avoid seeking bids if every inquiry reveals its urgency. A dealer may refuse to warehouse inventory if an immediate report lets others trade against the position. A buyer planning a capacity expansion may not want exact quantity and timing published before deployment.

The corporate-bond experience illustrates the trade-off. TRACE dissemination has used size caps for large trades and has changed reporting windows over time. FINRA reviews cited research associating post-trade transparency with lower transaction costs and price dispersion, while regulators have continued to examine effects on thin issues and dealer willingness to commit capital. The relevant lesson is to test design rather than assume that one disclosure speed fits every market.

An IPv4 model could publish prompt observations for common small and medium block bands while delaying unusually large portfolio transactions. It could publish the exact prefix length but band the aggregate quantity where fragmentation would identify the party. It could release price ranges when a cell contains too few independent transactions for a robust average.

The system should never turn one transaction into several observations merely because a transferred allocation contains multiple prefixes. It should link commercially related legs with one transaction identifier and state whether the reported unit price applies to the whole package. Conversely, distinct bargains should not be merged merely because they closed on the same day.

Coverage is as important as price. A report should state the number of independent transactions represented, total address quantity, block-size distribution, regions, share contributed by the largest data provider and the number excluded under the method. If participation is voluntary, it should say so. A chart without those denominators gives readers no way to judge whether the series describes a market or one dealer's book.

Reference data is the first public good

The cheapest reform is not an exchange. It is a shared description of the asset and event.

Every transferable block should have a reference profile assembled from authoritative and verifiable sources. The profile would identify the prefix, current RIR, current registered organisation, allocation or legacy history where available, applicable agreement status, transfer eligibility, outstanding registry lock, route-origin history, RPKI and IRR state, reverse-DNS authority, material reputation indicators and known competing claims.

Not every field belongs in public view. Exact customer use, security contacts, legal advice and commercially sensitive defects may need restricted handling. The market still benefits if authorised entities use the same field names and evidence dates. A buyer can compare diligence from two brokers. An escrow provider can confirm that the delivered block matches the agreed profile. A later dispute can identify which fact changed.

Reference profiles must distinguish observation from assurance. An RDAP response on a date is an observation. A lawyer's conclusion about authority is an opinion. A route collector's history is evidence of announcements, not proof of lawful use. A reputation score is provider-specific. An RPKI-valid route is not a clean-title certificate. Each field needs provenance, time and limitation.

Consistent reference data reduces the “lemons” discount. When buyers cannot distinguish good blocks from defective ones, they lower bids for all blocks. High-quality sellers then withdraw rather than accept the pooled price, making the remaining inventory worse. Better evidence lets clean supply separate itself and gives impaired supply a transparent remediation path.

The standard should be portable. No broker should own the only usable description of a block. A seller should be able to take verified evidence to another intermediary. Portability increases competition and prevents market liquidity from depending on one firm's customer database.

Settlement quality can tighten the spread

A price is credible only if entities expect the transaction to complete. Settlement risk enters the spread whenever one side must perform before the other.

The buyer fears paying before authority changes. The seller fears releasing control before funds are irreversible. Both fear that an RIR will request additional documents, reject the path or take longer than the commercial timetable. The buyer may discover reputation or routing defects after approval. The seller may remain named in operational databases after payment. Currency, tax, court and sanctions requirements can add separate conditions.

A standard confirmation can convert these uncertainties into milestones. It identifies the parties, prefixes, price basis, fees, RIR path, authority evidence, escrow provider, conditions, target dates, operational deliverables, rejection consequences and dispute forum. It states which party bears delay caused by incomplete documents and which events permit termination.

Independent escrow can make payment conditional on defined evidence rather than one party's assertion. A signed registry notice can establish recognised transfer. A second operational certificate can address control of reverse DNS, RPKI, route objects and agreed letters of authorisation. Funds can release in stages if the contract separates registration from technical handover.

This is not a call for universal central clearing. A central counterparty would need capital, default rules, valuation, membership standards and the ability to complete or unwind a failed resource transfer across regional policies. The cost may exceed the benefit for bespoke and infrequent transactions. Standard bilateral settlement can remove many risks without mutualising all of them.

The liquidity effect is direct. Sellers accept tighter terms when payment certainty improves. Buyers bid more confidently when delivery is defined. Brokers spend less time reinventing documents. Comparable milestone data reveal which routes and practices fail. Settlement is therefore part of price formation, not an administrative task after the market has spoken.

Registry recognition is essential but bounded

RIRs maintain authoritative registration services and apply their regional transfer policies. Their work protects uniqueness, identifies recognised holders, updates records and supports reverse DNS and routing-security administration. A market that ignored those functions would produce weak claims and operational conflict.

That importance does not require a registry to control the commercial purpose of every transaction. ARIN's current specified-recipient policy still asks recipients to demonstrate need under its rules. RIPE NCC uses a different policy design for many transfers. Inter-RIR paths can combine source and recipient conditions. Those differences affect which bargains can settle and therefore affect liquidity.

The narrower institutional model asks registries to verify what only they can verify: the recognised source, authorised request, recipient account, policy eligibility, uniqueness of registration, applicable agreements and completion event. Commercial entities decide price, financing, tax, accounting, portfolio strategy and whether acquisition is preferable to leasing or IPv6 investment.

Fraud prevention does not require purpose control. Identity, authority, duplicate claims, sanctions where law requires, document integrity and conflicting requests can be checked directly. A registry can reject a forged source without deciding whether the buyer's expected return is socially desirable. It can maintain an accurate record without certifying fair value.

Clear boundaries improve liquidity because entities know which uncertainty belongs where. A buyer should not infer that registry approval validates price or block reputation. A registry should not be expected to compensate a buyer for a bad bargain. A broker should not advertise policy familiarity as official endorsement. Each institution can publish its decision and limitation.

Cross-regional liquidity depends on portable evidence

IPv4 is globally useful but registration remains regional. A seller in one RIR may reach a buyer in another only where policies and operational procedures permit the path. Both sides can require evidence. Timing can depend on coordination between institutions.

This fragmentation narrows the effective buyer set for some blocks. A technically equivalent prefix may receive different bids depending on destination eligibility, agreement status and expected completion. The price difference is not necessarily a judgment on the people or networks in a region. It can be the capitalised cost of an administrative route.

Portable authority files can reduce that cost. Corporate documents, chain-of-name evidence, registry correspondence, prefix schedules and recipient eligibility can be assembled once and presented in a consistent form. Registries remain free to apply their own policy, but parties do not have to translate the same facts from the beginning for every route.

Common milestone definitions would also improve comparison. “Submitted” should mean that the receiving institution acknowledged a complete request, not that a broker sent an email. “Approved” should identify which RIR approved and whether counterpart approval remains. “Completed” should identify the authoritative record change. Without these definitions, one provider's seven-day completion can be another's thirty-day process measured from a different start.

The market should publish path-level evidence rather than regional stereotypes. Median and tail times, information-request counts, withdrawals and failures should be grouped by directed path, period, resource status and size where coverage allows. Cells with limited public evidence cases should remain unpublished or explicitly uncertain. A global average can hide the route that determines the actual bargain.

The public logs are a foundation, not a complete market tape

RIPE NCC publishes transfer statistics identifying original and transferred blocks, parties, country codes for later records, transfer type and processing date. ARIN publishes transfer data files and annual service statistics. Other RIRs provide policy and transfer information in their own forms. These records make recognised movement auditable and support custody research.

They do not normally reveal the complete commercial event. The processing date may differ from the contract date. A row may represent a market sale, a corporate reorganisation or another recognised change. Price, commission, unsuccessful bids, escrow, financing, warranties, route condition and post-closing cost are generally absent. A lease can create economic use without appearing as a permanent transfer.

The missing fields do not make the logs defective. Their primary purpose is registration, not market surveillance. Problems arise when analysts treat them as a complete tape. Counting rows can double-count one portfolio split into many prefixes. Counting addresses can make one large internal reorganisation dominate a year. Counting named parties can miss affiliates or name changes.

Commercial data should therefore link to registry evidence while retaining its own event identity. One transaction can point to several recognised prefix changes. One registry change can be marked non-price-forming where it reflects a reorganisation. A later correction should not erase the original observation.

This linked design respects institutional roles. RIRs do not need purchase agreements. Market-data contributors do not rewrite authoritative holder records. Researchers can test the connection and understand omissions. The result is a richer account without turning the registry into an exchange.

Price publishers need benchmark discipline before benchmark authority

IPv4.Global publishes transaction-based pricing reports and historical observations from its marketplace. APNIC's annual address analysis has used those data to discuss longer price movements while calling for broader publication by brokers. These materials are valuable because public price evidence is scarce.

They are also bounded. A broker's completed transactions are not the whole market. Exclusive mandates, customer mix, region, block size and reporting choices shape the sample. A monthly average can move because the composition of blocks changed even if like-for-like prices did not. Commentary about demand and supply is the provider's interpretation of its observed business.

A credible publisher should disclose the method: included evidence classes, date basis, price basis, currency conversion, fee treatment, block-size bands, treatment of portfolios, related-party exclusions, corrections, minimum cell size and use of judgment. It should publish the number and address volume of observations behind each point, subject to confidentiality safeguards.

It should separate an index from a valuation. An index describes transactions selected under a method. A valuation estimates what a particular block might fetch after adjusting for attributes. A broker's indicative range is neither unless the method says so. Contracts should not reference a series merely because it is the only visible chart.

Independent review becomes more important when the publisher also brokers or owns inventory. Review does not require disclosure of every client. An auditor can test that reported transactions existed, were classified consistently, were not duplicated and followed the published rules. Findings and method changes can be released without revealing parties.

The market earns benchmark authority through governance. It does not receive it automatically from longevity, brand or a visually precise graph.

A central exchange could concentrate new risks

Centralisation has real advantages. One venue can expose competing interest, automate matching, enforce standard rules and produce a clean event record. For homogeneous small blocks and qualified entities, an auction or order book may work well.

Compulsion would create costs. A single venue could become the gatekeeper to price discovery. Its listing criteria could exclude unusual but legitimate blocks. A dominant operator could charge access fees, privilege affiliated services or use confidential order flow. A cyber incident or governance failure could freeze a large share of visible liquidity.

An order book can also display false depth. If offers are non-binding, duplicated across brokers or conditional on undisclosed registry outcomes, the screen concentrates noise. If block quality differs, ranking solely by unit price creates adverse selection. If large holders avoid revealing inventory, the visible market may be the least attractive remainder.

Mandatory central execution would raise a jurisdiction problem. RIR policies differ, parties contract under different laws, and an exchange cannot guarantee that every accepted match receives authoritative recognition. If it conditions access on one interpretation of ownership or need, it may import a private policy into every region.

The better near-term design is interoperability. Multiple venues and brokers can use common reference fields, quote labels, confirmations, event identifiers and reporting methods. Buyers can compare responses. Sellers can move evidence. Data utilities can aggregate independent observations. Competition remains possible at every layer.

Central venues may emerge where they add value. They should win activity through execution quality, not by being declared the only legitimate market.

Measuring improvement requires the missing denominators

A reform cannot be judged from published transfer volume alone. It needs a cohort that begins when a serious commercial search starts.

For buyers, record requests issued, brokers contacted, qualifying responses, executable quotes, accepted quotes, withdrawals, agreed transactions, registry submissions, completions and operational handovers. For sellers, record marketable blocks, mandate type, indications, funded bids, accepted bids and reasons for non-completion. Use pseudonymous case identifiers so one event is not counted several times.

Then publish liquidity measures by comparable class: median time to first credible quote; number of independent quotes; executable bid-offer range; seller net and buyer all-in price; completion probability; registry-controlled and party-controlled time; remediation incidence; and price movement between agreement and completion. Tail outcomes matter as much as medians.

Coverage must accompany every result. How many contributors participated? What share came from the largest broker? Were direct transactions absent? Did the panel include failed searches? How many cases lacked a usable price? Without those answers, an apparent improvement can reflect a different sample.

No current public source supplies the global denominator of attempted IPv4 transactions, all executable quotes or all failed transfers. It would be false to state a worldwide bid-offer spread, completion rate or market share for brokers. A pilot can establish its own denominator prospectively and report only that cohort.

The goal is not to produce a perfect global number immediately. It is to replace unsupported claims with reproducible local measures and expand coverage over time.

Number Resource Society can convene without controlling

NRS presents itself as a global non-profit membership organisation supporting businesses and advocating greater holder control. It also publishes material describing sale and lease as ways to monetise excess IPv4 capacity and identifies transparency, compliance and professional management as important. That position gives NRS a reason to help improve market infrastructure.

Its strongest contribution would be a voluntary common language. NRS could convene brokers, buyers, sellers, RIR practitioners, escrow providers, network operators and independent researchers to define reference fields, evidence classes, milestone names, fee bases and correction rules. The resulting standard should be openly licensed and usable by non-members.

NRS could sponsor a confidential transaction panel administered by an independent statistical party. Contributors would receive validation reports; the public would receive aggregates with coverage, concentration and uncertainty. NRS should not see commercially identifying material unless necessary, and no entity should be able to remove an inconvenient transaction after learning its effect.

It could also publish model confirmations and settlement checklists, compare registry paths, and support training on authority, reputation and operational handover. Accreditation should mean that a contributor follows the data method, not that NRS approves the price, buyer, seller or purpose.

Safeguards are necessary because advocacy can create perceived conflict. Governance should include independent benchmark experts, buyer and seller representation, published recusals, method-change consultation, external audit and a complaints route. NRS's first-party claims about monetisation and member rights should not be treated as independent proof of market performance.

The role is positive precisely because it is bounded. NRS can reduce information and coordination costs. It should not become a global exchange, registry, price setter, transfer approver or court.

Liquidity can improve even when reported volume falls

Volume is an outcome, not a complete welfare measure. A market can record fewer transfers because buyers found efficient substitutes, because sellers no longer faced distress, or because one large transaction replaced many small ones. It can also record more transfers because portfolios were fragmented, registrations were corrected or the same economic exposure moved through several entities. Neither direction settles liquidity by itself.

The stronger test asks what happened to the choices available to a entity with a defined requirement. Did a buyer receive more independent, comparable quotes? Could it distinguish a clean block from an impaired one before committing? Did the seller understand net proceeds after fees? Did accepted terms complete within a narrower time range? Could either party take its evidence to another intermediary?

Price stability is equally ambiguous. A stable series can reflect deep, balanced demand and supply. It can also reflect stale assessments carried forward through months with no independent trade. Volatility can reflect disorder, but it can also reveal new information about IPv6 adoption, cloud demand, portfolio supply or block quality. The market should not set low volatility as an objective detached from evidence.

The same discipline applies to spreads. A narrower quoted range is useful only if both sides are executable for meaningful quantity. An intermediary can display an attractive spread while adding fees, rejecting acceptance or offering a different product after inquiry. Measurement should use completed all-in outcomes and the conditions attached to firm quotes.

A credible evaluation therefore uses a dashboard rather than one target: search, competition, all-in price difference, depth, completion, settlement variance, remediation and coverage. It reports which indicators improved and which deteriorated. It avoids collapsing them into a proprietary liquidity score whose weights cannot be challenged.

This approach protects reform from vanity metrics. The objective is not to maximise rows in a transfer file or make a chart smooth. It is to reduce the cost and uncertainty of moving suitable address capacity to a willing user while preserving accurate registration and informed choice.

A practical sequence starts with evidence, not a venue

The first phase should define the transaction. Publish an open data dictionary for block attributes, price basis, evidence class, party capacity and milestones. Test it against historical transactions from several brokers and direct parties. Record where the fields fail to describe real bargains.

The second phase should standardise pre-trade comparison. Develop a request-for-quote form and seller tender form. Require clear distinction among indication, executable quote and accepted bargain. Permit bespoke terms but make deviations explicit.

The third phase should standardise bilateral settlement. Publish a confirmation and milestone receipt set covering authority, escrow, RIR action, funds and operational handover. Do not prescribe governing law or force one escrow provider. Measure time and failure from the same starting points.

The fourth phase should operate a voluntary post-trade panel. Begin with a small number of contributors and publish exact coverage. Use delayed or banded disclosure for sensitive transactions. Link commercial events to public transfer evidence where possible without assuming every registry row is a sale.

The fifth phase should invite independent evaluation. Did quote competition increase? Did the spread between seller net and buyer all-in cost narrow? Did completion become more predictable? Did clean blocks separate from impaired ones? Did large holders withdraw because disclosure was too aggressive? Revise the method based on observed effects.

Only then should entities ask whether a new execution venue is needed. If common data and settlement solve most frictions, a compulsory exchange adds little. If certain block classes still suffer from fragmented interest, competing auction or request-for-quote venues can address them using the shared standards.

Credible prices come from contestable evidence

The IPv4 market already forms prices. Buyers compare internal cost, leases, carrier services, address sharing and IPv6 transition. Sellers compare continued use, lease income, direct bids and broker proposals. Intermediaries negotiate across those reservation values. Transactions close under RIR rules. Public reports reveal part of the result.

The weakness is not the absence of one official price. It is the difficulty of knowing whether two observations describe the same product, whether a quote could have been executed, whether an agreed bargain settled and how much of the market a published series represents.

Standardised reference data addresses the product. Quote labels address intent. Bilateral confirmations and escrow address settlement. Linked post-trade records address learning. Method governance addresses benchmark trust. Coverage statements preserve the denominator. Each reform improves liquidity without requiring every entity to trade in one place.

Registries remain essential because recognised control and accurate records are part of delivery. Their authority should not expand into approving transaction purpose, investment strategy or price. Brokers remain valuable because search, diligence and inventory are real services. Their information advantage should be disciplined by disclosure, portability and competition. NRS can help coordinate standards if it submits its own advocacy and market interests to independent safeguards.

An exchange is a tool, not a definition of a market. IPv4 liquidity will be credible when a buyer can compare serious offers, a seller can reach competing demand, both can settle predictably and outsiders can understand completed prices within their limits. That outcome depends less on where the bargain is matched than on whether the evidence travels with it.