.com off to strong start in Q3

Verisign’s .com gTLD had a relatively strong showing in the first month of the third quarter, its zone file growing by over half a million domains.

The TLD had 155,946,391 names in its zone at the start of August, up 526,205 names or 0.34% on the start of July.

For comparison, the zone grew by 464,822 names in June, 795,533 in the whole of Q2 and 817,590 in the whole of Q1.

Other strong volume performers in July were cheapo new gTLDs .xyz and .top, which grew by 257,830 domains (5.63%) to 4,840,663 and 224,816 domains (5.2%) to 4,547,051 respectively.

In percentage terms, the biggest growers were .casa, up 82.83% or 14,974 domains to 33,051, .mobi, up 47.05% or 121,174 domains to 378,703 and .help, up 39.55% or 22,513 domains to 79,275.

In raw domain terms, the biggest losers in zone file growth in July were .lol (down 97,718 to 294,656), .sbs (down 42,169 to 839,977) and .bond (down 37,845 to 150,272).

Of the 1,194 TLDs for which I currently have monthly growth stats, about 250 shrank, about 420 grew, and the rest (largely dot-brands or unlaunched generics) were flat.

1 Comment Tagged: .com, stats, verisign

.my is growing like crazy

Malayasia’s .my ccTLD has almost doubled in size since the start of the year, likely due to rule liberalizations and steep discounts at leading registrars.

MYNIC, the local registry, is reporting 675,607 domains under management at the end of July. That’s up 165,061 or 32% on the 510,546 reported at the end of June.

A total of 523,218 were direct second-level .my registrations, up from 350,441. DUM in third-level spaces such as .com.my and .net.my were all flat or slightly down over the month.

.my started the year with 342,326 domains. The TLD has grown 97% since then. All the growth has been at the second level.

The surge is likely due to a combination of factors — that the ccTLD has only recently dropped its local residency requirements, and that some international registrars have discounted .my to bargain-bin prices.

MYNIC signed a deal with Internet Naming Co and Tucows last year that would see .my names registerable by non-Malaysian registrants, but it was not immediately successful.

MYNIC had hoped to hit 400,000 domains by the end of 2024. It ended up taking until April 2025 to hit that milestone.

Registrars such as Namecheap and Gabia are currently selling .my for around $2 for the first year, a heavy cut from the roughly $50 they usually retail for. Porkbun has gone as low as $1.34, which it says is cost price.

But renewals will hit at full price for the second year, meaning the current growth spurt may not be sustainable.

Comment Tagged: .my, mynic

ICANN settles $77 million sexual harassment suit

ICANN has settled another sexual harassment lawsuit filed against it by a former employee.

An ICANN spokesperson said the case, filed last August by 22-year meetings-team veteran Tanzanica King, “has been resolved”. King did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

King had asked for $77 million in damages, approximately half of ICANN’s annual budget, alleging she was the victim of a widespread “frat boy culture” that contributed to her being sexually harassed by her boss, passed over for promotions, and paid less than male colleagues.

The settlement, any financial component of which will no doubt be for a tiny fraction of what was demanded, seems to have come just a few weeks after ICANN lost its attempt to get the case thrown out and referred instead to arbitration.

A Los Angeles judge in June ruled that King was protected by a post-#MeToo law, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA), even though her employment contract dated back to 2002.

ICANN said last year that the allegations were “untrue” and that it “strives to create a positive, safe, and inclusive work and community environment, and is committed to the highest possible standards of ethical, moral, and legal business conduct.”

It’s at least the third time ICANN has had to settle sexual harassment suits in recent years.

2 Comments Tagged: ICANN, lawsuit, sexual harassment

Chinese domain spikiness ends in first half

China’s typically lumpy .cn domain market seemed to stabilize in the first half of 2025, posting modest growth rather than wild fluctuations.

While local registry CNNIC does not seem to have published its full H1 statistical report yet, it said in a press release this week that the were 20.85 million .cn domains registered at the end of June.

That compares to the 20.82 million names it had at the end of 2024, representing basically flattish growth.

In previous quarters, the world’s second-largest TLD had seen its numbers all over the shop, with growth of 1.2 million names in H224 and a dip of 563,000 in H124.

CNNIC said the total number of domains registered in China was 32.62 million. No further breakdowns were available.

Comment Tagged: .cn, cnnic

Registrars agree to higher ICANN fees

Domain registrars have agreed to pay more in ICANN fees, after a supermajority vote.

ICANN said today that registrars representing over two thirds of fees voted in favor of the increases, part of a package which Org reckons will add $4.6 million to its annual budget at first.

The package of increases also comes with an increase of the per-transaction fee, typically added by registrars at the checkout and sometimes called the “ICANN tax”, from $0.18 per domain to $0.20.

But the vote related to the variable fees, which will now go up from $3.42 million to $3.8 million per year. That sum is split equally between registrar accreditations, with a deep two-thirds discount for registrars with under 350,000 domains.

The fixed annual $4,000 per-accreditation fee is not changing.

The increases were proposed last October, along with registry fee increases, to plug budget shortfalls caused by macroeconomic factors such as inflation, lumpy registration patterns, and the post-Covid slump in registered names.

These are the first price increases ICANN has implemented in well over a decade.

1 Comment Tagged: budget, fees, ICANN

ICANN to review reviews after review review request fails

An effort by ICANN’s At-Large community to force the Org to stick to its bylaws commitments to periodically review its accountability and transparency has failed after nobody else supported it.

As I reported last month, ALAC petitioned its Empowered Community co-members to get ICANN to overturn its decision to delay Accountability and Transparency Review Team 4, which is already more than a year late.

The other EC members — Government Advisory Committee, the Address Supporting Organization, the Country Code Names Supporting Organization and the Generic Names Supporting Organization — had until July 10 to file their letters of support or objection.

But it received no support and the ccNSO actively objected. The threshold for the petition to go ahead was three votes in favor and no more than one vote against.

The ccNSO pointed out that the current cycle of constantly reviewing itself is broken and getting worse over time. It instead called for a fundamental change in how ICANN reviews itself:

We strongly believe that breaking this vicious cycle can only be achieved if the community pauses and critically assesses the current review system. Specifically, the community should evaluate the breadth and number of reviews by looking at purpose, scope, frequency and associated workload of all ICANN Bylaw mandated reviews (a review of reviews), before embarking again on an Accountability and Transparency Review, or any other Bylaw mandated review.

The GNSO Council had a motion on its table last week that would have expressed non-support for the ALAC’s petition, but a vote was deferred until August, by which point it will be moot anyway.

The ASO and GAC do not appear to have publicly expressed an opinion.

It was the first time any community group has attempted to get the Empowered Community to flex its powers over ICANN. Since Org’s split from the US government nine years ago, the EC has been essentially ICANN’s sovereign body.

The petition being thrown out enables either, depending on your point of view: a) a horrifying, bylaws-defying power grab by Org that threatens transparency and accountability or b) a common-sense step away from an interminable, soul-crushing, resource-sapping cycle of endless navel-gazing.

What it means is that ICANN is going to conduct a meta-review, reviewing how it conducts reviews, and then will fiddle with its bylaws to implement a new renew regime.

1 Comment Tagged: accountability, alac, atrt4, ICANN, reconsideration, transparency

Got junk? June’s biggest gTLD growers do

It’s becoming a truth universally acknowledged that when a gTLD sees a growth spike it’s because the registry is running a promo and tens of thousands of machine-generated junk domains have been registered.

That certainly seems to be true for June’s biggest growers.

The gTLDs the grew the fastest last month were .watch, .yachts, .autos, .irish, .boats and .qpon, each growing by between 50% and 73% and between 7,880 and 47,884 net domains compared to the end of May, according to zone file analysis.

But doom-scroll through lists of domains newly appearing in the zone in June (and presumably registered in the same month) and you’ll quickly see that the vast majority are utter crud.

XYZ’s .autos is a prime example. It’s currently retailing for under two bucks a name at the registrars I checked, and there were over 51,000 names in the July 1 zone that were not in the June 1 file.

Registrants took the opportunity to register hidden gems such as yqtsfg.autos, rgwydp.autos and l2xnnu7.autos… thousands of them. Not quite every new name but, eyeballing the list, very close to it.

I found that 37,428 of these 51,741 newly registered domains contain numerals. In .auto’s stablemate .yacht, 27,335 of its 33,620 new domains were partially numeric. These are not domains registered by investors.

The strings have clearly been algorithmically generated and bulk registered, but to what end?

It can be and is sometimes argued that there are legitimate reasons people might need to register tens of thousands of gibberish domains, but security researchers believe they’re primarily used for spam, phishing and other DNS abuse.

With ICANN being pressured to crack down on bulk regs, these kind of growth stories, along with the revenue they generate for the industry, might sooner or later become a thing of the past.

1 Comment

ICANN ditches Oman due to Middle-East conflicts

ICANN is relocating its next meeting, scheduled for this October in Muscat, Oman, due to travel difficulties and uncertainties caused by the ongoing conflicts in the region.

The meeting, ICANN’s 2025 Annual General Meeting, will now take place in Dublin, Ireland from October 25 to 30, the same dates as the Oman meeting was meant to take place, Org said.

“Recent developments, including associated flight disruptions and impending timelines related to planning the meeting, made it prudent and necessary to select an alternative and available location,” ICANN said.

While Oman is not involved in any current hostilities, other than as a mediator, Israel’s recent strikes on Iran have caused some busy air corridors in the region to be shut down.

Oman is over 2,000 kilometres distant from Israel, and just across the Gulf of Iran from Iran.

The switch will be frustrating not only for Omanis but also to community members from further afield who have booked their travel early or paid for visas and might have limited refund options. Dublin’s a way more expensive city to visit for travelers on a budget, too.

It also sucks for the organizers of Domain Days Dubai, the upcoming domainer conference. It is scheduled to take place in nearby Dubai immediately before ICANN 84.

ICANN has visited Dublin once before, exactly 10 years before the upcoming ICANN 84.

The Org hinted that Muscat could be selected for a future meeting, when and if things settle down.

Comment Tagged: dublin, ICANN, icann 84, muscat

ICANN’s mighty overlord flexes on transparency

ICANN is heading into uncharted waters after a key community group flexed its powers to hold the Org accountable for a recent board decision.

The At-Large Advisory Committee has become the first of ICANN’s overseers to push for a formal objection to ICANN’s decision to delay its next large-scale accountability review.

In layman’s terms, the ALAC wants the other DPs of the EC — the ASO, the ccNSO, the GNSO, and the GAC — to support its ECRP for a CRR challenging ICANN’s decision to delay ATRT4.

All clear? Great. Thanks for clicking.

Or… perhaps that all deserves some unpicking.

ALAC, the group that represents end-users at ICANN, is one of the five members of the Empowered Community — the group from which, under its bylaws, ICANN derives its powers and authority over domain names and such.

The other Decisional Participants are the Government Advisory Committee, the Address Supporting Organization, the Country Code Names Supporting Organization and the Generic Names Supporting Organization.

One of the EC’s powers is the ability to file a Community Reconsideration Request challenging an ICANN board or staff decision, if three of the DPs support the request and no more than one objects.

ALAC has become the first EC member since ICANN split from the US government in 2016 to formally kick off the process of scrounging up support for such a reconsideration request.

It’s filed an Empowered Community Reconsideration Petition, giving the other four DPs 21 days to vote yay or nay on whether the request should be formally filed.

Its beef is with the ICANN board’s decision in May to delay indefinitely the fourth Accountability and Transparency Review Team, ATRT4, and replace it with a CEO-led meta-review.

ATRTs are community-led reviews that ICANN, according to its bylaws, have to carry out every five years. ATRT3 kicked off at the end of 2018 and concluded in 2020 but its recommendations have not yet been fully implemented by ICANN.

ATRT4 has already been delayed for a year once by the board, last April, but the board wants the delay to continue so the community can take a step back and review, as one group put it, “why we review, what we should review and how best to review”.

I’m not making this up. One review is being replaced with a broader, CEO-led, meta-review that reviews the reviews. I haven’t even mentioned the Pilot Holistic Review or the various Continuous Improvement Programs.

The root rationale here relates to intellectual bandwidth. Arguably the biggest issue facing ICANN in recent years is its perceived (or actual) inability to get anything done in a timely fashion, and part of the reason for that is that community members, most of whom have day jobs or are volunteers, are forced to spend so much time navel-gazing or entangled in Tolkienesque cobwebs of red tape.

ALAC’s petition (pdf) accused the board of “usurping” the community by delaying ATRT4, in violation of its bylaws:

The EC, and by extension the ICANN community, believes that this continuing contravention of the Bylaws and disregard for ICANN’s Core Values poses a serious threat to ICANN’s mandate… It also significantly undermines trust in, and protection of, ICANN’s multistakeholder model of governance. This brings about a real risk of negative actions against ICANN, which could result in the loss of its mandate or could substantially risk the credibility and effectiveness of ICANN’s multistakeholder model.

It wants the decision to delay ATRT4 reversed. The question is, will it be able to muster up support from two other Decisional Participants, as required by the bylaws? I’d say that ALAC’s most-natural ally is the GAC, with the GNSO, seemingly baffled by the ALAC’s filing, the most likely to object.

The other four DPs have until a minute before midnight July 10 to submit expressions of support or objection.

Comment Tagged: accountability, alac, atrt4, ec, empowered community, ICANN

ICANN faces first pushback over DEI U-turn

ICANN’s decision to remove the words “diversity” and “inclusion” from its web site has prompted the first public, angry response from a community organization.

The Asia-Pacific Regional At-Large Organization, APRALO, one of the five regional groups making up the At-Large Community, wrote to ICANN’s top brass to say that “diversity, equity and inclusion” should be part of ICANN’s DNA.

As DI reported last month, ICANN buried a previously prominently linked “Diversity at ICANN” web page and changed all references to diversity and inclusion to “representation” or similar.

ICANN later said that the changes, which have not to date been reverted to the old language, were in response to “evolving external dynamics”. That’s broadly believed to be code for the Trump administration’s profound aversion to all things DEI.

Many US companies have been distancing themselves from DEI terminology since Trump took office in January, out of fear of reprisals. That includes Verisign, which deleted a section on DEI from its annual regulatory report.

But APRALO, which represents end-user groups across Asia, Australasia and the Pacific, reckons diversity is a core value of the ICANN multistakeholder model that should stay. Writing to ICANN, the group said:

ICANN is not a representative (or representational) model, but a multistakeholder participatory model that invites and welcomes broad spectrums of participation (i.e. diverse, inclusive, and not “representational”)… Therefore, the title change from “Diversity at ICANN” to “Representation at ICANN” is a misrepresentation.

…

ICANN cannot claim to be a multistakeholder-based organisation if diversity, equity and inclusion is not part of its DNA.

APRALO said that ICANN should restore the old DEI language or replace it with “alternative words that truthfully retain the meaning and intent”. Org should also be more transparent when it makes these kinds of changes, the group said.

Comment Tagged: apralo, dei, ICANN