Unstoppable wants to be a registry back-end
Unstoppable Domains has applied to ICANN to become a back-end registry services provider, according to the company’s CEO.
Matt Gould told DI that the company is currently going through the Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program, which pre-approves RSPs prior to next year’s next round of applications.
There are 27 companies with applications submitted to the program, according to ICANN’s latest stats, but Unstoppable is the first confirmed market newcomer.
The company is a recently accredited registrar, but is best-known for selling names on non-DNS blockchain naming systems.
Gould said Unstoppable plans to use its RSP accreditation for its own gTLD applications and those of its crypto-company clients. It doesn’t sound like it will be aggressively competing for customers in the traditional DNS space.
The accreditation is necessary because Unstoppable intends to vertically integrate, marrying traditional DNS with on-chain names in its gTLDs, so extra technical work is needed, Gould said.
Unstoppable is building its registry infrastructure using Google’s open-source Nomulus software, he said.
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That step makes absolutely sense.
Looking forward to see the opposite arguments (if any).
The only issue with running your own back-end is to get registrars to integrate. The already operating back-ends come with a distribution channel up and running.
This is a bold step by Unstoppable. Vertical integration, especially with Nomulus, could set the stage for some very unique gTLD applications in the next ICANN round. It’s interesting to think about how these hybrid systems will affect mainstream adoption. Managing a portfolio at CashproofDomains.com, I’ve observed that companies still trust strong dictionary-word domains, but curiosity about blockchain-based identity is definitely rising.
I had no problems (days ago) to onboard the well known RAs to .versicherung, which was somewhat special because of it’s policy. Probably not the same but i would say those guys could go on.
The Nomulus git repo is not very well maintained and it will be quite challenging to use this RSP code. I hope they have crunched the numbers to understand the investment.
Nomulus own documentation mentions which parts are usable out of the box and which ones require integration effort. What it doesn’t mention is the tie up to Google Cloud… once one adopts Nomulus, the Google Cloud bill will be eternal. Running it on AWS, Azure, Oracle or on-premises would be a start-from-scratch effort.