Domain registrants started leaving Epik in droves when CEO Rob Monster quit last year and serious allegations of financial mismanagement emerged, an analysis of the numbers shows. Epik’s total gTLD domains under management began to free-fall in September 2022, dropping by more than 70,000 by the end of the year, almost all as a result [...] Continue reading →

ICANN is planning changes to how its board of directors are picked, including new measures to get more community virgins around the table. Under proposed new rules for its Nominating Committee, which chooses eight of the 20 directors, at least three directors at any given time would have to be “unaffiliated”. The definition of “unaffiliated” [...] Continue reading →

The UK-focused domainer forum AcornDomains has been bought by the company that runs the fledgling London Domain Summit. Domainer Helmuts Meskonis said he’s bought the site via his companies, Helmuts Limited and No Stress Limited, which also runs hosting company HostMaria. Meskonis said he’s bringing on two more moderators — current community members — to [...] Continue reading →

Internet Naming Co is slashing thousands of dollars from the price of one of its TLDs and increasing the price of another by a similar amount. The company, which took over nine former Uniregistry gTLDs last year, is reducing the wholesale price of .forum domains from $1,000 a year to a retail price of $39 [...] Continue reading →

Community members will get more input into ICANN’s leadership than they have for a decade, as the Org searches for its new CEO. Chris Chapman, chair of the board’s newly reconstituted CEO Search Committee has laid out plans for a series of “listening sessions” that will give interested parties the chance to give their two [...] Continue reading →

ICANN intends to renew Verisign’s contract to run the .net gTLD and has opened the revised deal for public comment. At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be anything massively controversial about the proposed changes, so we probably shouldn’t expect the same kind of outrage similar contract renewals have solicited in the past. A great [...] Continue reading →

Australia’s .au ccTLD has added about 25,000 direct second-level domains since the start of the year, according to auDA. The registry said this week that it had 740,000 2LD .au names as of March. In its annual report for 2022, published in February, it said it had 716,000 at the end of the year. auDA [...] Continue reading →