Tucows’ domains business stagnates again in Q2

Tucows’ domain name business has experienced its third consecutive quarter of stagnating growth.

The company yesterday reported third-quarter total domains revenue of $61 million, compared to $62.3 million a year ago and $61.5 million in the second quarter.

Dave Woroch, CEO of Tucows Domains, described this 2% annual decline as “consistency” on a prerecorded address to analysts.

He pointed to Verisign’s recent comments about a decrease in .com registration volumes as evidence of an industry-wide post-pandemic slowdown, but was somewhat bullish on some new gTLDs.

“At the other end of the industry, we do see more robust growth in many of the new gTLDs that are of higher quality and that have little to no speculation or cyber crime opportunity,” he said.

The domains industry is “generally not showing a lot of growth”, he said, adding that “outsized growth would need to come from new areas”, which could include so-called “web3” efforts.

Woroch noted the recent funding of blockchain alt-root project Unstoppable Domains, but said Tucows is not a fan. Unstoppable has, like similar efforts dating back over 20 years, some “fatal flaws” and “a chicken and egg problem” of adoption, he said.

Domains under management at Tucows decreased to 24.8 million from 25 million sequentially and 25.6 million a year ago.

Tucows’ retail domains revenue was down to $8.5 million from $8.9 million a year ago, while the wholesale business, including value-added services, was down to $52.3 million from $53.4 million.

Including non-domains businesses, Tucows’ Q2 revenue was up 11% to $83.1 million and the net loss was $3.1 million compared with net income of $1.8 million a year ago.

GMO to sell Unstoppable’s crypto domains

Japan’s largest domain seller, GMO, is to sell Unstoppable Domains’s blockchain-based addresses under a new brand.

The company, which owns the registrar Onamae, is launching a site called “CryptoName by GMO” at cryptoname.jp, where Unstoppable’s full portfolio of crytocurrency-themed extensions are on offer.

Unstoppable said it’s first traditional domain name registrar to offer the service.

The CryptoName web site contains an extensive FAQ explaining that the names are primarily designed to address crypto wallets rather than web sites, where they won’t resolve for the vast majority of internet users and won’t be indexed by search engines.

ICANN terminates these three deadbeat registrars

Registrars based in the US, Philippines and Bangladesh have lost their ICANN accreditations for non-payment of fees.

ICANN recently sent termination notices to Domainia, HOAPI, and Innovadeus, which the Org says have breached their contracts by not paying and in some cases failing to provide required information and services on their web sites.

It appears all three companies are no longer operational. Domainia’s domain resolves to a GoDaddy sales lander, HOAPI’s is NX’d, and Innovadeus’s site is riddled with WordPress errors.

Innovadeus and HOAPDI were first deemed “past due” on their fees in November 2020, according to ICANN. For Domainia, it was September 2020.

Fortunately, it seems few to no registrants will be affected by the terminations. HOAPI had one gTLD domain under management, its own. Domainia had none, and Innovadeus had a few hundred, which will be transferred to another registrar.

New gTLD in trouble as largest registrar gets suspended

The .gdn gTLD registry, Navigation-information systems, is facing more trouble from ICANN Compliance, but this time it’s because its largest registrar has got itself suspended for non-payment of fees.

ICANN has suspended the accreditation of Dubai-based registrar Intracom for failing to cure an April breach notice demanding money, not implementing an RDAP service, not escrowing its data, and generally giving Compliance staff the runaround for the last eight months.

Intracom is NIS’ biggest partner, responsible for over 10,000 of its 11,000 registered domain names. It doesn’t appear to have many domains in other gTLDs.

The company will not be allowed to sell gTLD domains or accept inbound transfers from July 6 to October 4.

NIS has been hit with its own breach notices twice in the last year, most recently the day after Intracom’s own notice, for failing to keep its Whois service up, but it cured the breaches before ICANN escalated.

Dynadot takes down its own web site after apparent breach

Dynadot took the drastic move of turning off its own web site last week after noticing an apparent security breach.

The registrar also reset all of its customers’ passwords, acknowledging the pair of moves were “extremely inconvenient”.

It’s not clear from the company’s statement whether there really had been an attack or whether it overreacted

It said “our system noticed irregular activity” but later brought its site back up after staff “investigated and determined there was not a threat”.

The company said it has engaged “cyber security experts” to help it out in future.

As GoDaddy shutters URL shortener, could x.co come back on the market?

GoDaddy has turned off its URL shortener service, freeing up the likely six-plus-figure domain x.co for another use or possible resale.

The company told users of the service last week that their redirects would no longer work as of June 4. Instead, they’re being asked to set up a redirect using any of the domains in their GoDaddy accounts.

It has not been possible to create new links for a few years, the company said.

GoDaddy acquired x.co from then .co registry .CO Internet in 2010 as part of the Colombian ccTLD’s global relaunch.

The price was never disclosed, but I suspect it was part of a broad partnership package that saw GoDaddy market .co hard, rather than a domain-only sale.

Around the same time, Twitter bought t.co for its own URL shortener and Overstock.com bought o.co for $350,000 as the cornerstone of an ultimately disastrous rebranding campaign.

It’s difficult to imagine x.co being worth less than that, particularly when the matching .com is owned by the richest person in the world.

In the time since x.co launched, .CO Internet was acquired by Neustar, which was then in turn acquired by GoDaddy.

Following a renegotiation of its relationship with the Colombian government in 2020, GoDaddy is now merely the back-end provider, rather than the ccTLD’s official sponsor.

Porkbun offering free .gay domains for Pride month

Porkbun and Top Level Design are giving .gay domains away to celebration Pride month, the companies have said.

There appears to be a limit of one per customer, and names flagged as premium are not covered.

Porkbun’s renewal price is $27 per year.

The companies, which are affiliated, are using pride22.gay for the offer, which redirects to a porkbun.com page.

Pride month is celebrated in June to commemorate the Stonewall riots in New York in June 1969, widely seen as a significant turning point in the gay rights movement in the US.

NameSilo profitable in Q1

Canadian registrar NameSilo today reported that it took a profit in the first quarter, reversing the loss of a year ago.

The company reported a net income of CAD 330,613, compared to a loss of CAD 3.8 million in Q1 2021, on revenue that was up 34.7% at CAD 10.8 million.

The registrar said its names under management had increased to 4.63 million by the end of March.

NameSilo now believes it is the 11th largest registrar.

Porkbun hits a million domains

Oregon-based registrar Porkbun said it recently hit a million domains under management.

The seven-year-old company added that it now has over 200,000 customers.

Porkbun carries over 500 TLDs, which are wonderfully illustrated on the form of cartoon pigs on this page.

The company is giving away T-shirts along similar lines on Twitter to celebrate its milestone.

Porkbun is affiliated with new gTLD registry Top Level Design, which runs .ink, .wiki and .gay.

Tucows to reanimate Tucows brand as sales flatten

Tucows has become the latest domain name company to confirm it’s experiencing the post-pandemic blues, and said that it plans to revitalize the Tucows brand.

Reporting basically flat-to-down domain numbers on Thursday night, the company said that it plans to “more closely connect the Tucows parent and the registrar brands” in the coming months.

“For more than two decades, Tucows has been synonymous with domain registration. In the coming months, you will see a stronger connection of the Tucows brand with our registrar properties, with each anchored by the rich heritage of the Tucows name,” Dave Woroch, CEO of Tucows Domains, said in prepared remarks.

It’s not clear what this will entail in practice. The company’s main brands are Hover in retail and OpenSRS and Enom in wholesale, and you’d be hard pressed to find a mention of Tucows on any of their storefronts.

First-quarter domain revenue was “essentially unchanged” from the same period a year ago, at $61.5 million compared to $61.2 million.

Retail domains revenue was down to $9.1 million from $9.2 million. While wholesale revenue was $52.5 million versus $52 million, the increase was driven by value-added services rather than domain revenue, which was basically flat.

The renewal rate was a healthy 81%.

Woroch said that domain transactions “are now settling back in at pre-pandemic levels” after the lockdown bumps experienced over the last two years. He pointed to Verisign’s recent comments to suggest these are industry trends.

Including Tucows non-domains businesses, revenue was up 14% to $81.1 million and there was an overall net loss of $3.0 million compared to a profit of $2.1 million.