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ICANN to auction off first failed new gTLD

Kevin Murphy, May 21, 2021, Domain Registries

ICANN is planning to auction off .wed, the first new gTLD from the 2012 application round to fail.

The TLD has been running on Nominet’s Emergency Back-End Registry Operator platform since late 2017, when former registry Atgron suffered a critical failure — apparently planned — of its registry services.

After some lawyering, Atgron finally lost its registry contract last October.

Now, ICANN has confirmed that .wed will be the subject of an open Request For Proposals, to find a successor registry operator.

It’s the first time it’s had to roll out its Registry Transition Process mechanism. All previous gTLD terminations were single-registrant dot-brands that were simply quietly removed from the DNS root.

The RFP will basically amount to an auction. Registries will have to pass the usual technical and financial background checks, but ultimately the winner will be selected based on how much they’re willing to pay.

In ICANNese: “The RFP process will identify the highest economic proposal and utilize it as the deciding factor to proceed to evaluation.”

But the money will not stuff ICANN’s overflowing coffers. After it’s covered the costs of running the RFP, any remaining cash will go to Atgron. There’s a non-zero chance the company could make more money by failing than it ever did selling domain names.

It currently has 39 domains under management, the same 39 it’s had since Nominet took over as EBERO, and the successor registry will be expected to grandfather these names. Only 32 of the names appear to be genuine end-user registrations.

Atgron’s business model, which was almost antithetical to the entire business model for domain names, is to blame for its failure.

The company tried to sell domains to marrying couples for $50 a year, on the understanding that the renewal fee after the first two years would be $30,000.

Atgron wanted to actively discourage renewals, in order to free up space for other couples with the same names.

Unsurprisingly, registrars didn’t dig that business model, and only one signed up.

Fortunately, whichever registry takes over from Atgron will be under no obligation to also take over its business model.

ICANN said it expects to publish its RFP “in the coming months” and pick a winner before the end of the year.

Forty weddings and a funeral? .wed is dead but may come up for auction

Kevin Murphy, October 12, 2020, Domain Registries

.wed has become the first commercial, open, non-branded new gTLD to have its registry contract unilaterally terminated by ICANN, and it could soon be looking for a new home.

ICANN terminated the contract with US-based Atgron last week, almost three years after imposing emergency measures to protect registrants after the company’s business model failed miserably.

The company wanted to provide a space for engaged couples to promote their weddings for about $50 a year, but its business model was based around basically forcing registrants to abandon their names by charging a $30,000 renewal fee after year two.

Unsurprisingly, it attracted few registrants — about 300 at its 2016 peak — and only one registrar.

By the time the end of 2017 rolled around, it was languishing at 39 domains (for the purposes of a whimsical headline, let’s round it up to 40) and its agreement with its back-end registry operator was on the verge of expiring.

In the hope of keeping its customers’ domains working, Atgron turned off its Whois for a week, attracting the attention of ICANN and triggering a criterion for transitioning to an Emergency Back-End Registry Operator.

It’s been on an EBERO, in this case Nominet, since December 2017, with all domains essentially frozen.

In the meanwhile, it’s been fighting against contract termination with ICANN, first in mediation and then in arbitration.

Last month, the arbitrator ruled that Atgron was in breach for failure to pay its ICANN fees, and ICANN terminated the registry agreement October 5.

.wed is certainly not the first new gTLD to get terminated by ICANN — there’s been about a dozen to date — but it is the first to be a non-dot-brand.

This means ICANN will get to test its Registry Transition Process for the first time.

When a dot-brand dies, ICANN just removes it from the root and lets it stay dead on the grounds that there’s no plausible successor and no registrants will suffer.

In this case, we’re talking about an open, non-branded gTLD with a generic string that could potentially rack up many thousands of registrations.

There’d be no obligation for a future operator to take on the silly business model.

The Registry Transition Process will go one of two ways.

If Atgron has already picked a successor registry, ICANN will conduct a series of evaluations that look like they would be a piece of cake for any existing gTLD portfolio owner to pass.

But if Atgron has no heir apparent, it goes to an RFP which basically amounts to an auction, with the company prepared to pay Atgron the most money becoming the company’s presumed preferred successor.

With Atgron still owing ICANN money — presumably hundreds of thousands of dollars — in past-due fees, I’ve little doubt what ICANN’s preferred outcome would be.

For Atgron, there’s the distinct possibility that it could make more money from crashing .wed into the ground than it ever did by actually selling domains.

.wed is not a bad string — it’s short, meaningful, and has a niche of potential registrants already forced to overpay for almost everything else — and I’m fairly confident it could easily find a new home at an existing registry.