Identity Digital is gobbling up Verisign’s back-end business

Verisign appears to be getting out of the new gTLD back-end registry services business, with Identity Digital taking over most of its dot-brand contracts.

Since 2018, over 80 gTLDs have moved from Verisign’s back-end to a competitor or have been removed from the DNS altogether. Over the same period, it hasn’t won any business from any of its rivals, according to data I’ve compiled.

Over the last few months about 30 new gTLDs have moved their technical back-end from Verisign to competitors, all but two to Identity Digital. Nominet and CIRA picked up a gTLD deal each.

Verisign tells me it’s not interested in providing new gTLD back-end services any more. A Verisign spokesperson said in an email:

In the case of the back-end services we provide to new gTLDs, we continually evaluate our business objectives and a few years ago, we decided that we would not be renewing our current new gTLD registry services customers and that we would help them transition before their contracts expired if they wished.

gTLDs moving home recently include .bosch, .crown, .chanel, .next, .nikon, .juniper and .fidelity.

Given the sheer number of gTLDs going to Identity Digital, it appears that there may be a side deal between the two registries to recommend migration to ID, but both companies declined to comment on that suggestion.

In 2012, Verisign had signed on to be the back-end for 220 new gTLDs, mostly dot-brands. Not all of those made it through the application process, but today my database has the company as RSP-of-record for fewer than 80 2012-round labels.

The company was said to be among the priciest option for dot-brands, trading on decades of .com uptime prestige, but the need for an RSP with 150 million domains under management is debatable when your gTLD is essentially just parked.

And for Verisign, the dot-brand business is not material to revenues and probably not especially profitable, at least when compared to the vast amounts of cash .com effortlessly generates.

In 2021, Verisign lost its deal to manage .tv to GoDaddy, after it declined to compete presumably due to the anticipated lower profit margins.

Kiwis finally making the switch to EPP with Canadian deal

InternetNZ has picked the winner in its registry replacement project RFP, which will see it switch the entire .nz back-end to the industry standard EPP protocol by the end of next year.

It’s selected the CIRA Registry Platform from Canadian .ca registry CIRA, but will continue to run its own back-end in-house in New Zealand.

InternetNZ had said last October that it planned to overhaul its outdated infrastructure, and put out its feelers for would-be vendors or service providers.

At that time, 65% of its over 720,000 .nz registrations and about 65% of its registrars were still using its old, proprietary Shared Registration System protocol.

Now, SRS is to be deprecated in favor of the CIRA platform and the Extensible Provisioning Protocol that has been industry standard across all gTLDs and many ccTLDs for the better part of two decades.

And they say New Zealand is progressive.

InternetNZ plans to make the switch fully by the end of next year. This is of course going to require some implementation work by registrars, which will have to code new hooks into the .nz registry.

UPDATE: This article was updated April 20 to correct “this year” to “next year”. InternetNZ plans to finish the switch before the end of 2022, not 2021.

CIRA hits major .ca milestone on 20th anniversary

Canadian ccTLD registry CIRA has registered its three millionth domain, having grown .ca by over 160,000 names this year.

By happy coincidence, the milestone was hit November 30, exactly 20 years after CIRA officially took over the registry from its predecessor.

CIRA said that regs are up 34% this year, the boosted growth largely due to more small businesses coming online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This all means that .ca is the 12th-largest ccTLD in the world, according to the registry.

CIRA replaces CORE as emergency backup registry

ICANN has switched around its line up of emergency registry providers, swapping out CORE Association for CIRA.
The organization last night announced that its three newly contracted Emergency Back-End Registry Operators are Nominet, CNNIC, and CIRA.
EBEROs are failsafe registries that will take over any gTLD that has failed or is on the verge of failing outright, putting its customers domains at risk.
The EBERO is responsible for winding down these gTLDs in an orderly fashion, giving registrants the chance to migrate to a different TLD.
So far, only .wed has entered the program, when the project with the imaginative business model of making it impractical to renew domains went out of business in 2017.
Nominet now caretakes .wed under the EBERO program.
Both Nominet (.uk) and CNNIC (.cn) have been approved EBEROs since 2013, under five-year contracts with ICANN.
CORE was also approved in 2013, but appears to have lost its contract. It’s been replaced by CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registry Association.
“We are honoured to be among this select group of trusted registry operators,” Dave Chiswell, VP of product development for CIRA, said in a statement. He said CIRA only suffered eight hours of downtime when it migrated .ca to a new back-end platform recently.
A key reason for CIRA replacing CORE is very likely geography. When ICANN put out its request for proposals last year, it made a big deal about how it wanted coverage in Europe, Asia and North America — where most gTLD registries are concentrated.
CORE is based in Switzerland. CIRA is obviously based in Canada and CNNIC is Chinese.
Another side-effect of the contract renegotiations is that ICANN is now paying 30% less for the services of the three providers, according to a recent board resolution.
The three providers are contracted for five years.
Whether, and to what extent, they’ll ever actually be triggered to provide EBERO services is open to debate.
Currently, there are six gTLDs in advanced stages of ICANN compliance proceedings, putting them at risk of having their contracts revoked: .whoswho, and five Persian-themed strings.
It’s not inconceivable than one or more of these gTLDs could wind up in EBERO, but ICANN appears to be cutting the registries a lot of slack to resolve their issues.

CIRA has a record year for regs

Canadian ccTLD registry CIRA says its fiscal 2018 was its best year yet for new .ca registrations.
The company today said it registered 537,941 names in the year to the end of March.
Its previous record, from its FY12, was 511,900.
Its current total domains under management was 2,736,980, an all-time high, the company said in a press release.
CIRA has a Canadians-only reg policy, which reduces the impact of foreign speculation.

.sx switches from KSRegistry to CIRA’s Fury

Sint Maarten ccTLD .sx has changed registry back-end providers.
SX Registry has switched from Germany’s KSRegistry to Canada’s CIRA, according to a CIRA press release and IANA records.
SX is now using CIRA’s relatively new Fury back-end platform, which launched a bit over a year ago with the new gTLD .kiwi as its inaugural customer.
The transition took under 30 days, according to CIRA, which built Fury using its experience managing Canadian ccTLD .ca.
Sint Maarten is a relatively new country, formed when the Netherlands Antilles’ .an split into three new ccTLDs in 2010.
.an has since been retired.
SX Registry won the deal to operate the TLD and launched it in 2012. The company, while technically based on the island, is run by a Canadian.

In harsh tones, ccNSO rejects NomCom appointee

ICANN’s Country Code Names Supporting Organization has rejected the appointment to its Council of a Canadian registry director.
Saying NomCom ignored long-standing guidance to avoid appointing registry employees, the ccNSO Council has said the recent naming of Marita Moll to the role is “unacceptable”.
Moll will have to choose between sitting on the Council and being a director of .ca registry CIRA, the Council said in a letter to NomCom and the ICANN board.
Three of the Council’s 18 voting members are selected by NomCom. The rest are elected from ccTLD registries, three from each of ICANN’s five geographic regions.
To maintain balance, and promote independent views, the Council told NomCom most recently back in 2012 that it should refrain from appointing people connected to ccTLD registries.
The new Council letter (pdf) reads:

Council’s view (none dissenting) is that your Committee’s proposed selection directly contravenes this requirement, notwithstanding the clear and explicit assurance we received in 2012 from the then Chair of Nominating Committee that the Committee would be “avoiding any member already belonging to the ccTLD management participating in the ccNSO”.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that CIRA already has representation on the Council in the form of CEO Byron Holland.
The letter concludes that the conflict is “irreconcilable” and the appointment “unacceptable”.
As the ccNSO does not appear to have refusal powers on NomCom appointees, it will presumably be up to Moll to decline the appointment.

CIRA and Nominum offering DNS firewall

Canadian ccTLD registry CIRA has started offering DNS-based security services to Canadian companies.
The company has partnered with DNS security services provider Nominum to develop D-Zone DNS Firewall, which it said lets customers “block access to malicious content before it can reach their network”.
It’s basically a recursive DNS service with a layer of filterware that blocks access to lists of domains, such as those used by command and control servers, known to be connected to malware and phishing.
It’s a timely offering, given the high-profile WannaCry ransomware which infected hundreds of thousands of unpatched Windows boxes worldwide last month (though I’m not sure this kind of service would have actually prevented its spread).
The CIRA service uses Nominum’s technology but operates at Canadian internet exchange points and appears to be marketed at Canadian customers.
It’s the latest effort by CIRA to expand outside of its core .ca registry business. Earlier this year, it became ICANN’s newest approved gTLD back-end provider after a deal with .kiwi.
Many ccTLD registries are looking outside of their traditional businesses as the increasingly cluttered TLD market puts a squeeze on registration growth.

CIRA becomes first new gTLD back-end since 2012

CIRA, the Canadian ccTLD manager, has become the first new registry back-end provider to enter the gTLD market since the 2012 application round closed.
The company today announced that it has signed Dot Kiwi, operator of .kiwi, as its first client.
.kiwi will become the first non-.ca TLD that CIRA runs the back-end for, according to VP of product development Dave Chiswell.
CIRA has already completed pre-delegation testing and technical evaluation with ICANN, he told DI today.
It is believed to be the first back-end provider not attached to any 2012-round application to go through the PDT process.
That would make CIRA essentially the first company to officially enter the gTLD back-end market since 2012, in other words.
The .kiwi contract was up for grabs due to the fact that Minds + Machines, its original supplier, decided to get out of the back-end business earlier this year.
All of M+M’s own stable of gTLDs are being moved to Nominet right now, but customers such as Dot Kiwi were not obliged to follow.
Chiswell said that CIRA’s system, which is called Fury, has some patent-pending “tagging” technology that cannot be found at rival providers.
He said that registry operator clients get a GUI through which they can manage pricing tiers and promotions based on criteria such as substrings and registration dates without having to fill out a ticket and get CIRA staff involved, which he said is a unique selling point.
CIRA’s goals now are to try to sign up more TLDs (cc’s or g’s) to Fury, and to attempt to get Canadian brands and cities to apply for gTLDs in the next round, whenever that may be.
The company also intends to migrate .ca over to Fury from its legacy infrastructure at some point, he said.