DI Leaders Roundtable #4 — Big predictions for 2020

Hindsight is 2020, right? Not this time!
We’re rolling up to the end of the year, so for the fourth DI Leaders Roundtable I thought I’d task my panel of industry experts with the wholly original and unpredictable question:

What do you think will be the major trends or developments in the domain name industry in 2020?

I’m wonderfully happy to report that the panel grasped the opportunity with both hands and delivered an absolute smorgasbord (selection of open sandwiches) of informed opinion about how they reckon 2020 will play out.
From potential changes to security practices to ongoing consolidation to increased government regulation to the death of new gTLDs to the growth of new gTLDs, 2020 is certainly going to be a fun year to report on.
In no particular order, this is what they said:
Rick Schwartz, domain investor

2020 is going to be just a fabulous year.
It comes down to two words: re-branding and upgrading.
Businesses that have gotten domains that may have not been prime to begin with want prime domains now to help them grow and be taken more seriously.
Businesses, especially global businesses that made the mistake of using non-dotcom domains, have realized their mistake and want to upgrade to a dotcom domain because of their own self-interest. They don’t care what domainers think! They only care about what they think and their bottom line, and in that regard they only have one choice and they all know it.
It’s mandatory if they want to grow and become part of the largest franchise ever known to mankind. The dotcom franchise.
If you add up all the net worth of every company on earth using the dotcom brand, the number is unfathomable.
As we go into the seventh year of the new gTLD experiment, they are meaningless. They haven’t been adopted by almost anybody. Circulation is poor. So many registrations are questionable or penny-promotional. The majority are parked and not in use nor will they ever be. And 99.9% of the people on this planet could not name a single one of them! Not a one!
The poor roll-out, poor marketing, poor circulation, questionable tactics and rolling out hundreds of extensions at one time was a death wish. A demolition derby as I have described and look at the HUNDREDS that are truly dying on the vine. They are not viable!
The registries themselves wanted the same result as dotcom but they smothered their own product by holding back anything they deemed to have any value whatsoever. They wanted the same result as dotcom but they certainly didn’t use the same playbook. There was no such thing as premium domains with Network Solutions. That was what gave life to the aftermarket.
They changed the recipe and it is what it is. Instead of replacing dotcom domains they should have marketed them as an on-ramp to their main dotcom website. That was a fatal choice.
Country-code extensions with dual purposes have outperformed all the new gTLDs put together.
.org has legs. Even .net domains seem to be in better shape than any of the new extensions.
According to NTLDStats.com there are 400 extensions with less than 20,000 registrations. Not viable! Over 300 of them have less than 10,000 and more than 200 have less than 5,000 and most of those have 2,000 or less.
On the other hand, there have been a lot of gimmicks used by the top 10 to gain HOLLOW registrations. Those 10 control 63% of all new gTLD registrations. Leaving the other 37% to be divided by over 500 other extensions. It’s laughable.
And when it comes to aftermarket sales, 2019 was worse than 2018 and 2017. Wrong direction for something that is supposed to be “emerging.”
According to TheDomains.com reported sales, of new gTLD’s are in a nosedive for 2019 vs 2018 and 2017. And most were done by registries themselves and not individual domain investors. Wrong direction!
2017
1,007 Total Sales
$5.2m Dollar Volume
$5,118 Average Price
$500.3k High Price
2018
1,490 Total Sales
$5.7m Dollar Volume
$3,847 Average Price
$510k High Price
2019
865 Total Sales
$3.4m Dollar Volume
$3,940 Average Price
$335k High Price
To me, 2020 is a year of total clarity. The experiment is over.
Get on board or get run over.

Sandeep Ramchamdani, CEO, Radix Registry

Within the new domains space, we will see a clear separation between the top 10 most popular extensions, and everything else. Many new TLDs have been able to jump volumes by operating at ultra-low prices. As the reality of renewals hit next year, the top TLDs by DUMs will more closely represent the most popular strings overall. Registrars will naturally tend towards focusing on these strings at the cost of everything else.
We will continue to see the normalization of new strings, as its visibility driven by legitimate end-user usage, rises. Our hope is that more registries play an active role in driving adoption by highly visible end-users and accelerate this evolution.

Jeff Neuman, Senior VP, Com Laude

Looking into my domain name industry crystal ball for 2020, I can see the continuation of some of the same activities, the start of some new debates, and even more maturation of the industry. Here are my views on three of the policy issues likely to be center-stage in 2020 (in no particular order).
Transitioning to a new Steady State of New TLDs.
OK, so the next round of new gTLDs will not open in 2020. However, there will be some real progress made towards the next round. The Subsequent Procedures PDP will complete its policy work on its review of the 2012 round and deliver it to the Council, who in turn will approve (hopefully) the policy work and submit to the Board.
The ICANN Board will put out the report for public comment and we will see those that oppose any new more new TLDs come back out of the woodwork to file the same type of comments reminiscent of 2009/2010. They will claim that more TLDs are not needed, we should not be moving too fast (despite nearly a decade between rounds), and that we should not be adding new TLDs until we solve DNS Abuse, Name Collision, WHOIS/SSAD/GDPR/RDAP/UAM, (insert your own issue), etc.
Despite the likely negativity from some, the community will realize that there is value to additional new gTLDs and maintaining a competitive landscape. There is still value in innovation, encouraging consumer choice and competition. The community will rise above the negativity to realize that many of the issues we experience in the industry are in fact related to the artificial scarcity of TLDs and that we need to continue to push forward towards completing one of the original missions of ICANN.
Rights Protection Mechanisms move to Phase 2.
Admittedly most of the community has not been paying attention to the Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) Policy Development Process PDP. Currently it is working on Phase 1: Reviewing the RPMs introduced for the 2012 Round of New gTLDs. This work includes looking at the Trademark Clearinghouse, Sunrise Processes, the URS and the Trademark Claims process.
2020 may likely see the beginning of its second phase, the first ever review of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
The UDRP was the first of ICANN’s Consensus Policies, and one that has been in place for more than to decades. Great care must be taken in the review of this policy which most will argue has been ICANN’s most successful policy in its relatively young history. The UDRP not only protects the intellectual property community by going after the bad faith registration and use of gTLD domains, but it also has been instrumental for registries and registrars to stay out of the middle of domain name disputes.
Prior to the UDRP, the one domain name registry/registrar was constantly in court defending itself against claims of contributory infringement and hoping that courts would not impose liability on it for allowing the registration of domain names by cybersquatters and not taking back names when notified about the abuse that was occurring on those names.
The passage of the UDRP drastically changed all of that. Registries and Registrars could extricate themselves from domain name disputes by referring the parties to the UDRP and agreeing to following/implementing the decisions. Courts agreed that following the UDRP served as a shield of liability for those registries and registrars that faithfully followed the policy. The bottom line in my view is that domain name registries and registrars need the UDRP as much as the IP Community.
The DNS Abuse Debate continues.
Although some progress has been made in defining and mitigating DNS Abuse with a number of registries and registrars signing a Framework to Address DNS Abuse, more discussions by the ICANN community will continue to take place both within and outside of ICANN. In my opinion, those registries and registrars that are serious of addressing true DNS abuse, will continue to educate the community on the already positive steps that they have been taking to combat phishing, pharming, malware, botnets, etc. as well a number of other non-DNS abuse issues (illegal pharmaceuticals, child exploitation, etc.).
Other groups will continue to press registries and registrars to do more to combat all sorts of other non-DNS forms of abuse, while others will strenuously argue that the more that is done, the more we threaten the civil liberties of domain name registrants. The community will realize that there is no right side or wrong side in this debate. Each side of those complicated debate is right.
Hopefully, a true sense of “multi-stakeholderism” will arise where domain name registries and registrars continue to mitigate abuse while disassociating themselves from those that are not as serious about combating abuse, ICANN will develop tools that will constructively assist with mitigating abuse (as opposed to focusing on contractual regulations), and the rest of the community will work on how to combat the growing problem without trampling on the rights of registrants. At the end of the day, all of us have a role in protecting end users on the Internet.
Note: I know the ePDP work on Universal Access will of course be ongoing, but I am sure others will give their thoughts on that. From a non-policy perspective, the domain name industry will continue to consolidate. We may very well see more registry/registrar combinations, registries purchasing other registries and private equity investment. We will see some more innovative uses of brand TLDs and others following suit.

Christa Taylor, CMO, MMX

1. The predicted 2020 recession will reward agile organizations who embrace machine learning to enhance operational efficiencies, customer experiences and protect corporate profit margins. Naturally, organizations with high operating costs will be the hardest hit with impacts being felt in the second half of 2020.
2. The potential recession combined with mounting pressures to increase efficiency will lead to a renewed focus on reaching niche markets to expand business.
3. Protection and representation movement of identities will continue to gain strength and momentum in 2020 as more and more people recognize the importance of controlling their own personal data.
4. Horizontal and vertical consolidation along with increased synergies will continue throughout the industry.
5. The 4th industrial revolution (IoT, VR, AI, BC) will gather momentum and provide additional opportunities for the use of domain names.
6. The next round of new gTLD applications will encounter unanticipated challenges causing delays.
7. New gTLDs registrations will continue to grow in 2020.

Michele Neylon, CEO, Blacknight

I suspect we’ll see more consolidation across the domain and hosting space. Afilias will probably acquire a few more under-performing registry operators. Some will already be on their platform, while others will be using their competitors. CentralNic will continue to acquire companies that fit with their portfolio of services.
There’ll be more mergers and acquisitions across the hosting and domain registrar space with a small number of companies dominating most developed markets.
The PIR acquisition by Ethos Capital will close and the sky won’t fall. PIR will increase their wholesale price by a few percentage points which will upset domain investors. There’ll be increased calls on ICANN to take action, but these will be rebutted.
More country code operators will start using AI to combat abusive registrations. In some cases I suspect we’ll see more stringent registrant validation and verification policies being introduced, though many ccTLD operators will find it hard to balance maintaining new registration volumes while also increasing the overall “quality” of the registration base.
There’ll be an increase in internet shutdowns in less-developed democracies, while governments in Europe and elsewhere will increase pressure on social media companies to stop the spread of propaganda. Internet infrastructure companies will come under more pressure to deal with content issues.
As we enter a new decade the role of the internet in our daily lives, both business and personal will continue to grow.
The big challenges that lie ahead are going to be complex. Without increasing security there’s a tangible risk that consumers will lose trust in the system as a whole and governments will want to impose more regulations to ensure that. One of the challenges is going to be balancing those increased levels of security and consumer confidence while not stifling innovation.
It’s going to be a fun future!

Dave Piscitello, Partner, Interisle Consulting Group

Expect increased scrutiny of the domain registration business. Our study and others to follow will continue to expose enormous concentrations of abuse and criminal domain registrations at a small number of registrars.
Domains registered using bulk registration services will attract the most attention. We call these “burner domains”, because cybercriminals use these in a “register, use, and abandon” fashion that’s similar to how drug dealers use disposable or burner mobile phones.
Governments will become more insistent that ICANN does more than acknowledge their recommendations and then defer adoption. They will increase pressure to validate domain registration data and legitimate businesses will happily comply with the additional validation overhead because of the abuse mitigation benefits they’ll receive.
There’s a possibility that a government other than the EU will adopt a data protection regulation that exposes the flawed logic in the ill-conceived Temp Spec “one redaction fits all”. Having decided to “run with GDPR”, what will ICANN do when faced with a government that insists that email addresses be made public?
The governance model will also fall under scrutiny, as the “multi” in multi-stakeholder appears to be increasingly dominated by two stakeholder interests and public interest barely receives lip service.

Ben Crawford, CEO, CentralNic

• There will be more creative ways to bake identity, cyber security, crime prevention and policing, and IP protection measures into domains and registration services
• More registries will be auctioning their own deleting domains
• Large tech firms, finance players and telcos will play and increasing role in the domain industry
• Further consolidation of gTLDs as the bigger registry operators continue to acquire some of the smaller ones
• More regulations impacting the domain name industry
• Smart independents like .XYZ, Radix and .ICU (which went from zero to 4+ million DUMs in 18 months) will continue to dominate the nTLD space (without blowing $100m on the rights to their TLDs)

Jothan Frakes, Executive Director, Domain Name Association

Consolidation will continue — look for a lot of M&A activity and corporate development. Lots of moves and role changes with people changing companies as the consolidation occurs. With change comes great opportunity, and there will be a lot of change.
The industry is kicking off the year with oomph — the new location and format for NamesCon, billed as as the Domain Economic Forum in Austin. The event looks promising, as it begins refreshed and demonstrates the strengths of the team who produce Cloudfest. Austin, like Las Vegas, is a mecca for tech startups, but larger, so hopefully the convenience of the venue to the local tech companies, along with with GoDaddy demonstrating a heavier presence at the event this year will be a big lure to attract more new faces to this great industry (and event).
There will be more focus on making things easier for new customers to use and activate services on domain names. Cool technologies such as DomainConnect or other methods that enable “app store” type activation of domain names will continue to make it simpler for a domain name owner to activate, build and use their domains. This is a crucial evolutionary step in the business, as it plays a significant role in renewal rates and overall customer growth.
We’ll see further innovation in the use of domain names become more mainstream. IoT, GPS/Geo, AI, Bots, voice, AR/VR and other technologies will drive expanded use of domain names. Even Blockchain, which seems to have gotten more pragmatic about purpose, has a lot of promise with how it can interact with DNS now that the hype has scaled back and the designated drivers that remain are plowing forth with their efforts to deliver on the core purpose/benefits they set out to deliver.
Domains, as well as the cool things that you can do with them, will continue to be a growing business that enables people and organizations to build and do great things.

A very happy new year to all DI readers and supporters!

DI Leaders Roundtable #3 — What did you think of ICANN 66?

It’s time for the third in the series of DI Leaders Roundtables, in which I pose a single question to a selection of the industry’s thought leaders.
With ICANN 66 taking place a couple of weeks ago in Montreal, Canada, a multitude of topics came under public discussion, among them: DNS abuse, the .amazon gTLD application, access to Whois data and geographic names protections.
So, this time around, I asked:

What was your biggest takeaway from ICANN 66?

And this, in no particular order, is what they said:
Frank Schilling, CEO, Uniregistry

What a great industry… So many stable players with fresh ideas. Innovators who cross pollinate and stay with the industry in spite of the fact that there is no new gold and obvious money-making opportunity at the moment. Many stable operators trying new things and growing the industry from the inside out.

Michele Neylon, CEO, Blacknight

There weren’t any big surprises at ICANN 66. As I expected there were a couple of topics that many people were focussed on and they ignored pretty much everything else.
The biggest single topic was “abuse”. It’s not a “new” topic, but it’s definitely one that has come to the fore in recent months.
Several of us signed on to a “framework to address abuse” in the run up to the ICANN meeting and that, in many respects, may have helped to shift the focus a little bit. It’s pretty clear that not all actors within the eco system are acting in good faith or taking responsibility for their actions (and inactions). It’s also pretty clear that a lot of us are tired of having to pay the cost for other people’s lack of willingness to deal with the issues.
Calls for adding more obligations to our contracts are not welcome and I don’t think they’ll help deal with the real outliers anyway.
There’s nothing wrong in theory with offering cheap domain names but if you consciously choose to adopt that business model you also need to make sure that you are proactive in dealing with fraud and abuse.

Ben Crawford, CEO, CentralNic

That M&A has become the dominant business activity in the domain industry.

Milton Mueller, Professor, Georgia Tech

My takeaways are shaped by my participation on the EPDP, which is trying to build a “standardized system of access and disclosure” for redacted Whois data. The acronym is SSAD, but it is known among EPDP aficionados as the “So-SAD.” This is because nearly all stakeholders think they want it to exist, but the process of constructing it through an ICANN PDP is painful and certain to make everyone unhappy with what they ultimately get.
The big issue here concerns the question of where liability under the GDPR will sit when private data is released through a So-SAD. Registrars and registries would like to fob off the responsibility to ICANN; ICANN tells the world that it wants responsibility to be centralized somehow in a So-SAD but ducks, dodges and double-talks if you ask it whether ICANN org is willing to take that responsibility.
ICANN’s CEO, who fancies himself a European politician of sorts, has driven the EPDP team batty with a parallel process in which he ignores the fact that the EPDP team has all stakeholders represented, lawyers from contracted parties and data users, and privacy experts on it, as well as formal legal advice from Bird and Bird. Instead he feels compelled to launch a parallel process in which ICANN org goes about trying to make proposals and then ask European authorities about them. He has asked a bunch of techies unaware of the policy issues to design a So-SAD for us and is now badgering various European agencies for “advice” and “guidance” on whether such a system could centralize legal responsibility for disclosure decisions. The parallel process, known as the Strawberry team, was featured in the public meeting on Whois reform as if it was of equal status as the formally constituted EPDP.
But a great ICANN 66 takeaway moment occurred during that moment. The European Commission’s Pearce O’Donoghue told the assembled multitudes that a SoSAD “WOULD NOT…REMOVE THE LIABILITY OF THE DATA CONTROLLER, WHICH IS THE REGISTRAR OR THE REGISTRY. SO WE WOULD HAVE A QUESTION AS TO WHETHER IT IS ACTUALLY WORTH THAT ADDED COMPLEXITY.” So, bang, the request for European advice blew up right in Goran Marby’s face. Not only did he get a critical piece of advice on the most important issue facing the SoSAD and the EPDP, but he got it without going through the elaborate parallel process. No doubt there is now furious behind the scenes lobbying going on to reverse, change or step back from O’Donoghue’s comment. Marby has been quoted (and directly seen, by this writer) as claiming that with the submission of the Strawberry team’s formal request for “guidance” from the European Data Protection Board being submitted, he is now “done” with this. Let’s hope that’s true. My takeaway: ICANN org and all of its fruity concoctions needs to get out of the way and let the PDP work.
The final EPDP-related takeaway is that the biggest decision facing the EPDP as it makes policy for the So-SAD is who makes the disclosure decision: registrars who hold the data, or ICANN? Everyone agrees with centralizing the process of requesting data and hooking up to a system to receive it. But who makes the decision is still contested, with some stakeholders wanting it to be ICANN and others wanting it to reside with the contracted parties. It seems obvious to me that it has to be the registrar, and we should just accept that and get on with designing the So-SAD based on that premise.

Jothan Frakes, Executive Director, Domain Name Association

A few: WHOIS (or Lookup) remains challenging territory, registries and registrars > are not inactive about addressing abuse while avoiding becoming content police, and poutine is delicious.

Christa Taylor, CMO, MMX

From my perspective, the biggest takeaway is the level of industrious efforts, transformation and passion throughout the industry. Every meeting and dinner consisted of a broad range of organizations and people with diverse perspectives on industry topics resulting in thought-provoking debates or conceptual brainteasers. Compared to a year ago, the conversations have materially changed — impacted from industry consolidations, system updates and developments along with organizational transitions to streamline business in one method or another. While there is still plenty of work ahead of us, both within the industry and ICANN, it’s satisfying to reflect and realize that progress is being achieved, cooperation benefits all and no matter how long the tunnel might be, there is light.

DI Leaders Roundtable #1 — How many new gTLDs will be applied for next time around?

How many new gTLDs will be applied for in the next application round?
This is the first question I put to the DI Leaders Roundtable, which you may recall I announced a couple weeks back.
As a reminder, the panel is comprised of leading thinkers in the domain name industry or ICANN community, covering as broad a cross-section of expertise as I could muster.
The question I posed each panelist this time was:

There were 1,930 applications for new gTLDs in 2012. Given everything we’ve learned over the last seven years, how many applications do you think there will be in the next round?

There seemed to be a rough consensus that it’s a little early to put any concrete predictions out there, and that perhaps I should have eased the panel in with something a little less challenging, but some very interesting — and divergent — opinions were nevertheless expressed.
Some of the participants asked me to note that they were speaking in a personal capacity rather than with them wearing a specific one of their various professional/volunteer hats. To save time, readers should just assume that every opinion being expressed below is personal to the expert concerned.
In no particular order…
Jeff Neuman, Senior VP, Com Laude

Without wanting to sound like I’m trying to avoid answering the question or hedge my bets, we have to consider this question in the context of the current landscape. The number of applications in the next round will be dependent on the outcomes of the current Subsequent Procedures PDP Working Group, alongside macroeconomic business factors. So therefore I’ll put a range on the possible answer — at the low end (if the application fee remains as is and world economies are facing significant troubles) around 1,000; at the top end (with application fee reduced to a level that operates as far less of a barrier, a fair economic wind behind us and some targeted promotion of the opportunities) there could be up to 10,000.
One thing that is clear is that many of the applications will come from brands that would like to actively use their domains. Those who were forward-thinking and have taken bold steps in the first round are the ones who are benefiting most from the new gTLD program. That’s not to say that there have not also been issues with brands. In 2012 many brands were pressured to apply for TLDs by third parties who advised them to apply for purely defensive reasons. Others gave up after the many fits and starts of the program as well as the overly lengthy period it took ICANN to evaluate the TLDs, approve Specification 13, respond to name collision, and the change of rules to temporarily disallow “closed generic” TLDs. Not surprisingly, we have seen a number of these brands drop out of the program.
However, many of the ones that have stuck it out are doing well. Some have even made transitions from their “.com” or their ccTLDs to their brand TLDs. Others have used their TLDs for marketing campaigns, corporate social responsibility programs, internal corporate intranets, job sites, geolocation tools, social media programs, events and customer service. And this is just the beginning.
What we need to ensure for the future is that application fees represent the true costs of the program and that the process is predictable, reliable and flexible enough to allow brands and others to innovate. Over-regulation due to the fear of unlikely edge cases or paranoia due to how potential applicants for purely generic open TLDs cannot be allowed to happen. All TLDs should not be painted with the same regulatory brush and the community needs to understand that we should be encouraging different business models for TLDs that do not necessarily include the unfettered ability for the public to register domain names in all TLDs. Ultimately, we need to do what is best for end users on the Internet.
Incentives should be provided for TLDs like .bank and .pharmacy to validate their registrants and ensure the safety of their end users by curbing abusive behavior. This could come in the form of reduced fees to ICANN or even ensuring that other similarly sensitive strings have similar verification requirements before allowing them to be delegated.
Finally, in order for the program to succeed, we need to stimulate growth of registries and registrars in the developing world. Support for these organizations should not only be in the form of monetary contributions, but also training programs, consulting services, legal support, and even operational support (eg., the free or low-cost use of third party DNS servers globally, security monitoring and other critical services).

Rick Schwartz, domain investor

Who cares?? Nobody in the real world. Totally meaningless except to the 1,930 applicants and a totally corrupt and out of control ICANN that needs oversight! SHAMEFUL!

Christa Taylor, CMO, MMX

“Will you walk into my parlour and tell me how many applications there will be for the next round, said a Spider to a Fly”
Oh, poor fly, good luck getting out of this one. There have been some exceptionally large volumes thrown around — 10k, 20k, but this fly would prefer to utilize data gathered from statistical surveys. Unfortunately, my workload didn’t allow me to conduct a survey this week so instead, I’ll utilize a less scientific approach and seek the same leniency ICANN received in their volume prediction used in the 2012 round.
A multitude of variables may impact the volume of applications including: notice period, application fees, auctions and delegation rates with each factor being additive to the prior factor.

• Base volume: 2,000 applications is utilized as the initial value. While the type of applications may change, the overall volume is a logical starting point especially when considering the last round was in 2012.
• Notice period: A longer notice period on when the application period will begin will allow for more applicants to apply. Assuming a notice period of four months with a 10% increase in application volume for each additional four-month period. i.e. if there is a six month notice until application window opens, volume will increase by 100 (2,000 x 10% x (6-4/4)). Our total volume of applications is now 2,100.
• Application fee: The new gTLD program is expected to operate on a ‘revenue neutral’ basis. As such, the application fee should decrease from the 2012 fee of $185k. Since the volume of applications is inversely related to the fee, increasing the volume by say, 15% for every $10k less than $150k. For example, if the actual application fee is $125k, the volume of applications will increase by approximately ~800 (15% x 2,100 x ($150k – $125k/$10k) for a total of 2,900 applications.
• Auctions: One of the most significant items that could drive the volume of applications if auctions and other related resolution mechanisms. The windfalls from ‘losing’ in auctions are well-known and while other options have been discussed – Vickrey auctions, draws, etc. some applications will be submitted for financial gains. Additionally, the potential to gain from ‘losing’ in contention sets combined with reduced application fees and delegation rates (detailed below) will again impact the volume of applications. As such, the number of applications will increase similar to application fees but would suggest that for every $5k less than $150k application fee, the volume of applications will increase by 10%. If the application fee is $125k, the volume will increase by 1,250 (10% x 2,888 x ($150k-$125k/$5k) for a combined volume of 4,150 applications.
• Delegation rate: The final factor in this unscientific, simplistic volume projection is the delegation rate. In 2010, a rate of 1,000 per year was provided to minimize security and stability risks. If the delegation rate remains relatively the same, the processing of applications could take years and thereby, encourage potential applicants to apply knowing it will take years before their application is delegated. Additionally, a reduced application fee minimizes an applicant’s risk if they decide to withdraw at a later date. Applying another broad brushstroke of 5% per year for the length of time it will take for all applications to be delegated, excluding objections. If it is expected to take three years to process the subsequent round of applications, add in another ~750 applications (5% x 3 years X 4,150) for a total volume of 4,900, rounding to 5,000 applications.

“And take a lesson from this tale of the Spider and the Fly” — gather real data to project application volumes and escape these impossible questions.
Ref: Howitt, Mary. The Spider and the Fly. (1829)

Michele Neylon, CEO, Blacknight

It’s not one that’s easy to answer — I think we all got it terribly wrong the last time round.
I suspect, though I could be completely wrong, that there will be at least 1,000 applications if there is a new round. Of course, that number is not based on anything other than just a gut instinct. I don’t think there will be as many distributed retail TLDs in a next round. Apart from a couple of outliers the bulk of new TLDs haven’t been as big of a success as their backers expected.
I can imagine that some cities would pitch for a TLD in the next round but it’d be more of a play in terms of tourism rather than commercial gain.
Some would have us believe that a “lot” of brands want to apply for a TLD in a next round, but I do wonder how much of that demand is “real” and comes from brands and how much of it is being pushed by those who stand to gain from applications. Of course, there could be a lot of brands out there that feel a desire to get their own TLD, but it’s also very clear that many of the brands that got one the last time round haven’t done a lot with them (with a few notable exceptions)
It’s a very good question to ask, but until there’s more clarity about the rules and the costs we’re all going to be guessing.

Jon Nevett, CEO, Public Interest Registry

Check back with me in 2022 when we may know the application fee; how contention resolution would work (i.e. will there be speculative applications); and the role of the GAC in reviewing applications.

Dave Piscitello, Partner, Interisle Consulting Group

While I can’t speculate how many, I truly hope that we have fewer “generics” that only serve to create a larger set of TLDs that will be offered in bulk at fees as low as 1 yen to organized spam gangs or botnet operators. ICANN hasn’t provided a scientifically valid economic study that demonstrates a need for more of these; in fact, ICANN’s own DAAR data shows that nearly half of the abused or criminally-used domain names have migrated to the piddling 10-12% share of the total gTLD delegated (and resolving) domain names that the new TLDs represent.
Having said this, I do believe that there are some success stories that point would-be applicants to modestly profitable ventures. City TLDs for the most part have remained free of abuse or criminal misuse. A portfolio of these might be interesting. I think that brands still don’t really know how to use their TLD or migrate to these in a way that alters the threat landscape.

Ben Crawford, CEO, CentralNic

Our focus today at CentralNic is supporting the growth of existing ccTLD and gTLD registries. However there is no company more prepared for the next round than us, and based on our discussions with potential applicants, we expect more applications in this nTLD round that the last.
Generic TLD applicants obviously gravitate towards CentralNic Registry Solutions as the natural home of TLDs seeking meaningful growth. We are not only the market leaders with more registrars actively selling our nTLD domains than any other backend, but we have as many domains under management as the number 2, 3 and 4 players combined.
Brand owners are also very keen to sign up with BrandShelter as a low cost and flexible one-stop shop that can handle application, backend, registrar and domain management services under a single contract with a money back guarantee. They particularly like that we have the best value support for dot-brands that do want to actively use their TLDs (like .DVAG, .ALLFINANZ and .MINI) while we don’t employ pushy sales people to hassle our clients happy with a defensive strategy to “activate” their TLDs.

Milton Mueller, Professor, Georgia Tech

Is a negative number an acceptable answer? Will some of the past 1,930 be allowed to bring their TLDs back to the store for a refund? What exactly is ICANN’s return policy, is it as good as TJ Maxx’s? More seriously, I would expect quite a few less applications this time around. I’d be surprised if it exceeded 500. We don’t see any smashing successes from the first round.

Introducing… the DI Leaders Roundtable

Today, I’m introducing what I hope to be the first of several regular features, the DI Leaders Roundtable.
Every week or two, I’ll be putting a single question to a collection of domain industry and ICANN community leaders and compiling their responses in order to gain some insight into current thoughts on hot topics or broader industry trends from some of the space’s top thinkers.
I’ve tried to reflect a broad cross-section of the industry, with a mix of business, policy and technical expertise from registries, registrars, back-ends, new gTLDs, legacy gTLDs, investors, etc.
The initial line-up for the panel, which will likely evolve as time goes by, is, in alphabetical order.
Ben Crawford, CEO, CentralNic
Crawford is CEO of CentralNic, a triple-play domain company based in London and listed on the Alternative Investment Market. Initially a vendor of pseudo-gTLDs such as uk.com and gb.com, CentralNic has over the course of the last seven years evolved into a company that sells both its own self-managed TLDs, such as .sk, as well as acting as a back-end for the likes of .xyz, .site and .online. Describing itself as a consolidator, the company nowadays makes most of its money via the registrar side of the house as a result of a series of mergers and acquisitions, particularly the merger with KeyDrive last year.
Jothan Frakes, Executive Director, Domain Name Association
A long-time industry jack-of-all-trades, Frakes is currently executive director of the Domain Name Association, the prominent industry trade group. Frakes has acted in a number of roles at domain name companies, as well as co-founding the popular NamesCon conference back in 2014. His technical credentials can be exemplified by, among other activities, his participation in Mozilla’s Public Suffix List, while his policy nous could be vouched for by many who have worked with him during his 20 years of ICANN participation.
Richard Kirkendall, CEO, NameCheap
Kirkendall founded leading budget registrar NameCheap in 2000 and has occupied the office of CEO ever since. A long-time Enom reseller, NameCheap’s popularity was for many years shrouded in mystery. It finally transferred the last of its Enom names over to its own accreditation in January 2018, revealing it to have 7.5 million gTLD names under management. It added a further two million over the next 18 months, and says it has over 10 million names in total. NameCheap is known for its low prices and for its occasional support for pro-freedom political causes such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Milton Mueller, Professor, Georgia Tech
Mueller is an academic and among the most prominent voices in ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group. Based at the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he founded the Internet Governance Project, an independent policy research outfit, in 2004. He’s the author of several books on the topic, and very active in ICANN policy development, including the current effort to balance privacy rights with commercial interests in the Whois system.
Jeff Neuman, Senior VP, Com Laude
Neuman is senior vice president of brand-protection registrar Com Laude and sister company Valideus, which provides new gTLD consultancy services to brand owners. From 2000 until 2015, he worked in senior policy and registry business roles at Neustar, helping to apply for and launch .biz in 2001. A noted ICANN policy expert, Neuman has sat on various ICANN working groups and currently co-chairs the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process, which is developing the rules for the next round of new gTLDs.
Jon Nevett, CEO, Public Interest Registry
Nevett is CEO of Public Interest Registry, which manages the 10-million-domain-strong legacy gTLD .org and a handful of new gTLDs. Prior to PIR, he was executive vice president of Donuts, and one of its four co-founders. He’s been in the domain business since 2004, when he joined Network Solutions as a senior VP on the policy side of the house. Nevett has also been involved in ICANN policy-making, including a stint as chair of the Registrars Constituency.
Michele Neylon, CEO, Blacknight
Neylon is CEO and co-founder of Blacknight Internet Solutions, a smaller registrar based in Ireland. Known for his “often outspoken” policy views, he’s a member of several ICANN working groups, sits on the GNSO Council representing registrars, and is a member of stakeholder group committees for various ccTLD registries including .eu, .ie and .us. Blacknight has almost 60,000 gTLD registrations to its name but also specializes in serving its local ccTLD market.
Dave Piscitello, Partner, Interisle Consulting Group
Piscitello is currently a partner at security consultancy Interisle Consulting Group, having retired from his role as vice president of security and ICT coordination at ICANN last year. With over 40 years in the security business, he’s also a board member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) and the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). Interisle is an occasional ICANN security contractor.
Sandeep Ramchamdani, CEO, Radix Registry
Ramchandani is CEO of Mumbai-based new gTLD registry Radix, which currently has a portfolio of 10 gTLDs and one ccTLD. It’s known primarily for its low-cost, high-volume, pure-generic business model, which has seen its two best performers, .online and .site, rack up almost three million domains between them. Radix is a unit of Directi Group, which is where Ramchandani cut his teeth for almost a decade before taking the reins of Radix in 2012.
Frank Schilling, CEO, Uniregistry
Schilling started off as a domain investor at the second level, 19 years ago, eventually managing hundreds of thousands of secondary-market domains with his company Name Administration, before founding Uniregistry in order to invest in new gTLDs in 2012. As a registry, Uniregisty has about a quarter of a million names spread across its 22-TLD portfolio; as a registrar it has over 1.2 million domains under management. Schilling is widely considered one of the most successful domain investment pioneers.
Rick Schwartz, aka the “Domain King”
Schwartz is viewed by domain investors as one of the most successful domainers of all time, and is known for his forthright, blunt criticisms of both new gTLDs and poor domain investment strategies. He’s been buying and selling domain names since 1995, and has sold several category-killer .com domains for seven-figure sums. Schwartz also founded the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domainer conference in 2004, and it ran for 10 years.