4 ms·

> Even without the prices being uncapped, there's no guarantee that a gTLD will stick around. Actually, there is a guarantee that a gTLD will stick around. IC

> Even without the prices being uncapped, there's no guarantee that a gTLD will stick around. Actually, there is a guarantee that a gTLD will stick around. ICANN correctly determined that this would be ruinous to the health of the Internet as a whole if entire TLD's worth of domains could simply disappear, hence they set up procedures to guard against it, including a required daily data escrow deposit from all TLD operators that can be used to spin up the TLD by another registry operator if the worst catastrophe were to happen (which, it should be pointed out, has never happened). For more info see: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/ebero-2013-04-02-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/ebero-2013-04-02-en https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/data-escrow https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/data-escrow The only TLDs that have ever ceased operation entirely, like .xperia in the linked articles, are closed brand TLDs that were never used for anything, were never available for external registration, and that the company in question (Sony here) simply got tired of paying the annual fees on given their lack of use of it. These TLD discontinuations don't threaten anything.

ziml77 5y ago
That's good to know! Still worried about the prices getting out of control if someone thinks you have a valuable name, but at least it's not too easy to nuke an entire TLD.
oauea 5y ago
Oh good, it will remain available at the low, low price of half a million per year. That soothes my worries entirely.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  You're painting a very broad brush with that one extreme outlier. Most registries don't operate like that; stay away from the few that do.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Isn't the problem that there's nothing preventing all of the registries of new gTLDs from suddenly starting to operate like that tomorrow?
  - lbotos 5y ago
    How does one know if they are picking a registry that doesn't operate like that? I have a benign gTLD that went from $10 -> $30 next year... I shudder to think what it will be in 5. EDIT: Also I just looked, and most are doing a thing were the y will let you get the first year for $12 or so, and then every year after is $25+.
    - CydeWeys 5y ago
      I'm still waiting on them to say which TLD this was. The big operators don't randomly make drastic price changes like that. This bizarre incident is getting outsized attention that I don't think it merits. Frankly, a premium price of hundreds of thousands per year sounds like an out-and-out mistake somewhere; no one is paying that, certainly not on a random first name on a random nTLD. That's simply not a successful business strategy; you'd lose all your registrations by doing it. Which TLD went from $10 to $30/yr? There's a lot of missing info in these comments! On the other hand, first year discounting is (as you're seeing) quite common. So just treat the 2nd year price as the actual price for the purpose of deciding whether you're willing to pay it. The key difference here is that you know the price schedule up front.
RegnisGnaw 5y ago
Actually that’s not true. In 2017 .wed (with real customers) gTLD ceased operation and was taken over by ICANN under the EBERO program. http://domainincite.com/22372-as-wed-goes-ebero-did-the-first-new-gtld-just-fail http://domainincite.com/22372-as-wed-goes-ebero-did-the-firs...
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  Ah interesting, I'd forgotten about that. A grand total of 40 domains were transferred through the EBERO process (note: they didn't experience interruption). I do like this quote from the article: > In this case, ICANN said that Atgron had failed to provide Whois services as required by contract. The threshold for Whois triggering EBERO is 24 hours downtime over a week. > However, the situation looks to me a lot more like a business failure than a technical failure. > Multiple sources with knowledge of the transition tell me that the Whois was turned off deliberately, purely to provide a triggering event for the EBERO failover system, after Atgron’s back-end contract with CoCCA expired. > The logic was that turning off Whois would be far less disruptive for registrants and internet users than losing DNS resolution, DNSSEC, data escrow or EPP. It sounds like they creatively used EBERO as the most expedient method to be able to cease hosting .wed, which they had been unprofitable to them owing to the mere 40 total registrations that they had. And they did so in a way that would minimally disrupt their users. Overall, seeing that EBERO was successfully used strengthens my confidence in the overall safety of new gTLDs. There's way too many of them out there, and they're way too important now as a whole, for anyone to simply just let them vanish out from underneath their users.

ziml77 5y ago

That's good to know! Still worried about the prices getting out of control if someone thinks you have a valuable name, but at least it's not too easy to nuke an entire TLD.

oauea 5y ago

Oh good, it will remain available at the low, low price of half a million per year. That soothes my worries entirely.

CydeWeys 5y ago
You're painting a very broad brush with that one extreme outlier. Most registries don't operate like that; stay away from the few that do.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Isn't the problem that there's nothing preventing all of the registries of new gTLDs from suddenly starting to operate like that tomorrow?
- lbotos 5y ago
  How does one know if they are picking a registry that doesn't operate like that? I have a benign gTLD that went from $10 -> $30 next year... I shudder to think what it will be in 5. EDIT: Also I just looked, and most are doing a thing were the y will let you get the first year for $12 or so, and then every year after is $25+.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    I'm still waiting on them to say which TLD this was. The big operators don't randomly make drastic price changes like that. This bizarre incident is getting outsized attention that I don't think it merits. Frankly, a premium price of hundreds of thousands per year sounds like an out-and-out mistake somewhere; no one is paying that, certainly not on a random first name on a random nTLD. That's simply not a successful business strategy; you'd lose all your registrations by doing it. Which TLD went from $10 to $30/yr? There's a lot of missing info in these comments! On the other hand, first year discounting is (as you're seeing) quite common. So just treat the 2nd year price as the actual price for the purpose of deciding whether you're willing to pay it. The key difference here is that you know the price schedule up front.

RegnisGnaw 5y ago

Actually that’s not true. In 2017 .wed (with real customers) gTLD ceased operation and was taken over by ICANN under the EBERO program. http://domainincite.com/22372-as-wed-goes-ebero-did-the-first-new-gtld-just-fail http://domainincite.com/22372-as-wed-goes-ebero-did-the-firs...

CydeWeys 5y ago
Ah interesting, I'd forgotten about that. A grand total of 40 domains were transferred through the EBERO process (note: they didn't experience interruption). I do like this quote from the article: > In this case, ICANN said that Atgron had failed to provide Whois services as required by contract. The threshold for Whois triggering EBERO is 24 hours downtime over a week. > However, the situation looks to me a lot more like a business failure than a technical failure. > Multiple sources with knowledge of the transition tell me that the Whois was turned off deliberately, purely to provide a triggering event for the EBERO failover system, after Atgron’s back-end contract with CoCCA expired. > The logic was that turning off Whois would be far less disruptive for registrants and internet users than losing DNS resolution, DNSSEC, data escrow or EPP. It sounds like they creatively used EBERO as the most expedient method to be able to cease hosting .wed, which they had been unprofitable to them owing to the mere 40 total registrations that they had. And they did so in a way that would minimally disrupt their users. Overall, seeing that EBERO was successfully used strengthens my confidence in the overall safety of new gTLDs. There's way too many of them out there, and they're way too important now as a whole, for anyone to simply just let them vanish out from underneath their users.