Epik backtracks on Kiwi Farms claim after legal threat
Epik has retracted a claim it made on social media that former customer Kiwi Farms was hosting child sexual abuse material on its web site.
The troubled registrar had said on Twitter in January that it had received a complaint about a “doxxing” post on the Kiwi Farms troll forum that contained naked photographs of an individual Epik said it believed was “underaged”.
Kiwi Farms supporters counter-claimed that the person in question was a 19-year-old adult and the web site’s owner, known as Null, threatened Epik with legal action.
Today, Epik tweeted:
Epik retracts its statement in regards to the Kiwi Farms @KiwiFarmsDotNet having child sexual abuse material on its website. While Epik may not agree with content that may be on its website, Epik has no direct knowledge of child sexual abuse material on the Kiwi Farms’ website.
In the last couple of month, Epik has sought to rebrand itself as a responsible registrar focused on entrepreneurs rather than controversial anchor tenants. It updated its abuse policy last year and kicked out customers such as Kiwi Farms and Gab.
The company is now owned by Registered Agents, a company formation company.
Tucows reports 2023 results
Tucows reported a domains business that was slightly stronger in the fourth quarter, as the company’s overall revenue grew by over 10%.
The registrar said its Tucows Domains unit grew by 2.6% at $61.8 million in the period, compared to Q4 2022. Gross profit was up 2.5% at $18.9 million and adjusted EBITDA was $10.8 million, up 2.1%.
For the full year, Domains brought in revenue down slightly at $242.1 million from $243.2 million in 2022. Gross profit was down from $78.2 million to $66.7 million and adjusted EBITDA was down to $42.6 million from $44.8 million in 2022.
CEO Elliot Noss said that he expects EBITDA for the domains business in 2024 to be $43 million.
Tucows’ domains under management was up at bit at the end of December, with 24.56 million names compared to 24.54 million at the end of Q3 and 24.39 million at the end of 2022.
Domains represents about 31% of the company’s overall business, with its Ting internet access services and Wavelo telecoms software unit making up the rest.
The company’s total revenue for Q4 was flat sequentially at $86.9 million, up from $78 million in the year-ago period. Full-year revenue was $339.3 million, up from $321.1 million in 2022.
GoDaddy reports strong domains growth
GoDaddy reported its fourth-quarter financial results last night, including growth in primary and secondary market domain sales it described as strong.
The company reported Q4 net income up 1,132% at $1.13 billion, on revenue up 5.8% at $1.1 billion. Income was higher than revenue due to a tax fiddle worth about a billion dollars.
CEO Aman Bhutani told analysts that domains revenue growth in the quarter was up 4%, while domains bookings was up 7%. Aftermarket domain sales totaled $118 million, an increase of 14%, he said.
For the full year, GoDaddy had net income up 295% at $1.39 billion on revenue that grew 4% to $4.25 billion. The annual results were of course also affected by the same tax situation.
Report: Monster “misappropriated” millions from Epik
Epik former CEO Rob Monster “misappropriated” over $3.5 million from the company before his departure last year, according to a report in Wired yesterday.
In a fairly in-depth piece on the registrar’s turbulent 2023, the tech publication said it has had eyes on a forensic accounting document that made the allegations:
An accounting firm hired by Epik to conduct a forensic investigation alleged that Monster had misappropriated more than $3.5 million, according to an internal preliminary report obtained by WIRED. More than $1.5 million was attributed to Monster personally withdrawing funds from the company. Nearly $2 million of Epik funds was used in Kingdom Ventures, Monsters’ venture capital firm, according to the report.
The article does not make it clear whether any criminality is alleged and Monster did not respond to the magazine’s request for comment.
The article also shed some extra light on the takeover of the former Epik Inc registrar by Epik LLC, a new company confirmed by ICANN to be owned by a company-formation outfit in Wyoming called Registered Agents Inc and not affiliated with Monster.
Registered Agents’ lawyer Bryce Myrvang told Wired that the plan is to offer its clients domains and web hosting when they form their companies, apparently confirming that the company is in it for the synergies rather than to hide Epik’s true owner.
Myrvang also offered his apologies to anyone offended by the recent weirdness coming out of its official Twitter account, which led some to believe that Monster was still pulling the strings at the company despite the new ownership.
GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
GoDaddy has updated its domain management platform to allow users to add their Ethereum blockchain wallet addresses to their domains for free.
The registrar said it has partnered with Ethereum Name Service to offer the service, which will enable mutual customers to transact with ETH cryptocurrency using regular domain names instead of the massive gibberish strings crypto wallets usually use.
It’s free, due to ENS’s release last week of gasless DNSSEC, which links Ethereum to DNS by placing wallet addresses in the TXT records of domain names.
Before this update, ENS said the crypto transaction fees (“gas fees”) involved in validating domain ownership could reach as high as 0.5 ETH, which is over $1,100 at today’s prices.
The GoDaddy integration means the process of adding the TXT records has been simplified and can the accomplished in just a few clicks via the usual domain management interface.
Using ENS with your domain does require turning on DNSSEC, which adds some security benefits but also carries a downtime risk over the long term.
Epik reveals who is running the company
Epik has named the three people it says are running the company following the change of control last June.
They are: JM Spear (identified as president) Jon Garrison (treasurer) and Bryce Myrvang (secretary), according to a recently published page on the company’s web site, which also names Registered Agents Inc as the parent company.
The three men hold the same positions at Registered Agents, according to that company’s web site.
The publishing of the new officers web page follows shortly after ICANN said it would ask Epik to publish such a page last week.
It seems the press release announcing the “acquisition” of Epik by Registered Agents I blogged about yesterday pre-dates ICANN’s approval of the new Epik LLC taking over the registrar accreditation of the old Epik Inc, which followed months of vetting.
So now we know who owns and runs the new Epik, which has committed to regain the trust of customers following a financial scandal and abandon its old devotion to a hard-line “free speech” stance, at least on paper.
The fact that Registered Agents specializes in company formations makes its acquisition of a registrar somewhat plausible, but the fact that its job is often to act as a proxy for its clients’ true beneficiaries means speculation about Epik’s ownership is unlikely to relent immediately.
Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
Epik has announced that it has been acquired and has named at least one person responsible for running the troubled registrar, but the new information is unlikely to satisfy critics or quash the conspiracy theories around the company’s new management.
“Registered Agents Inc., the leading registered agent service provider in the United States, has acquired key assets of internet domain registrar Epik,” the company said in a press release this weekend.
Bryce Myrvang, in-house counsel for Registered Agents, is named in the press release, but his position at Epik is not stated. Neither is it stated when the acquisition occurred — whether it was before or after ICANN approved the transfer of disgraced Epik Inc’s accreditation to Epik LLC last week, or after.
Neither the names Registered Agents or Bryce Myrvang are new information. Myrvang had been listed in ICANN’s registrar contact database after the LLC bought the Inc last June, but that changed last month to a job title rather than a named individual.
Because Registered Agents’ entire raison d’être is anonymous company formation and management, Epik’s past and current customers naturally wondered aloud whether it was in fact just a front for company founder Rob Monster, on whose watch the registrar started to descend into financial controversy, or somebody else with an interest in keeping their name secret.
But last week Epik and ICANN simultaneously announced that ICANN had completed its due diligence on the new company and found it completely independent of its former owners and leadership.
“Epik, LLC is a recently formed entity that is completely independent of Epik, Inc., its leadership, and shareholders,” ICANN told us.
“No previous owners, including Epik Inc founder Rob Monster and late stage CEO Brian Royce, are involved in Epik LLC in any capacity, including ownership interest in the business,” Epik said.
The announcement today that Registered Agents has bought Epik LLC will do little to unmuddy these waters.
For starters, if Myrvang is indeed a lawyer at a company that prides itself on its professionalism and discretion, there’s not a chance in hell he’s in charge of Epik’s Twitter account, which went a bit crazy last month.
There are undoubtedly synergies between a firm that deals in anonymous company formations — reportedly sometimes for dodgy clients — and a registrar that specialized in controversial anchor tenants.
But Epik is now confirming that it’s done a full U-turn on its strategy to court and welcome some of the web’s most distasteful sites and is now positioning itself as a regular workaday registrar with a focus on small businesses and entrepreneurs.
“Since the acquisition, and throughout the ICANN accreditation transfer review, Epik updated its terms of service and worked aggressively to rid its platform of violators. Having removed a handful of problematic clients, Epik can focus on rebuilding trust with its small business and entrepreneurial clients,” the company said in its latest press release.
Epik lost hundreds of thousands of domains under management last year, after a financial mismanagement scandal caused customers to lose confidence and flee in droves.
Epik to reveal its owners soon
The new Epik registrar has been asked to reveal the identities of its officers and owners shortly, I’ve learned.
The company last night revealed that it had passed through ICANN’s due diligence process, over six months after Epik LLC bought the assets of Epik Inc following a long financial mismanagement scandal, allowing it to take over its corporate predecessor’s accreditation.
Epik said the ICANN process had confirmed that Epik Inc founder Rob Monster and final CEO Brian Royce were not involved in Epik LLC in any way, but the company did not reveal who the owners or managers of the new company are.
I asked ICANN whether this was kosher under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, which obliges all registrars to publish the names and positions of their officers, as well as the names of any ultimate parent entity, on their web sites.
“We are reminding them of that obligation and expect it to be addressed shortly,” ICANN vice president Russ Weinstein told us.
Breaches of the RAA can lead to suspension or termination of the contract, but I don’t believe ICANN has ever initiated public Compliance proceedings against a registrar based solely on a relatively minor infraction.
Regardless, it seems that after half a year of mystery, the speculation may very well come to an end soon.
Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
Rob Monster and Brian Royce are no longer involved in the management or ownership of the registrar Epik, according to both Epik and ICANN.
Epik announced tonight that ICANN had completed its due diligence on the new company and approved the transfer of Epik Inc’s registrar accreditation to Epik LLC, following an acquisition in June last year.
Not only that, but it added that the two guys in charge of the Inc during its descent into disgrace in late 2022 and early 2023 are no longer involved with the company.
“No previous owners, including Epik Inc founder Rob Monster and late stage CEO Brian Royce, are involved in Epik LLC in any capacity, including ownership interest in the business,” Epik said (emphasis in original).
I’ve received a confirmation from ICANN. Vice president Russ Weinstein said in a statement:
ICANN has completed its thorough review of the assignment request and of the Assignee, and has determined that the new entity (Epik, LLC) meets the established registrar criteria. Epik, LLC is a recently formed entity that is completely independent of Epik, Inc., its leadership, and shareholders.
ICANN has updated its registrar records to remove the name of Bryce Myrvang as Epik’s primary contact to the generic “Domain Support”. Its phone number has changed from one in Idaho to one in Austin, Texas. Its email address has also changed.
Myrvang, who appeared in ICANN records following the June acquisition, works for a company called Registered Agents Inc, which specializes in anonymous company formations. It was not clear before whether Registered Agents had bought Epik LLC or was just a proxy to hide the true owner.
There had been speculation online that Epik founder Monster or subsequent CEO Royce might have been still secretly controlling Epik, exacerbated last week when the person in charge of Epik’s Twitter account appeared to go nuts, in keeping with both former CEOs’ previous social media behavior.
Who is running Epik, and who owns it, is currently unknown.
Epik fell from grace in late 2022 after a financial mismanagement scandal that saw it withhold money from domain buyers for months. It lost hundreds of thousands of domains as a result.
Freenom’s domains land at Gandi after termination
French registrar Gandi will be the beneficiary of Freenom’s ignominious collapse last year, it has emerged.
ICANN records updated today show that Freenom’s gTLD domains will be transferred to Gandi following the termination of Freenom’s Registrar Accreditation Agreement last November.
Freenom, legally OpenTLD, had been ignoring customers transfer and renewal requests, leading to domains being lost, according to ICANN Compliance, which flicked the off switch after three rapid-fire breach notices.
Freenom had just 14,546 gTLD domains under management at the end of September, mostly in .com and .net, down quite a lot from its October 2019 peak of 44,774.
The domains are being moved under ICANN’s De-Accredited Registrar Transition Procedure, which does not apply to any domains registered in any of the ccTLDs Freenom was managing under its much-abused free-to-register model, notably Tokelau’s .tk.
Freenom has not been accepting new registrations in any of these ccTLDs for over a year. It has reportedly lost its contracts to run .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq and .tk is looking for the exit.
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