Verisign’s own gTLDs .com and .net slowed overall domain industry volume growth in the second quarter, according to its latest Domain Name Industry Brief. June ended with 351.5 million registrations across all TLDs, up 1 million sequentially and 10.4 million year-over-year. Growth would have been slightly better without the drag factor of .com and .net, [...] Continue reading →

Nominet has recruited Vodafone’s head of finance to be its new CFO. The company announced today that Carolyn Bedford will join on December 1, and will also take an executive director seat on the board. She replaces Ben Hill, who was one of several directors removed from the board in a member coup in March [...] Continue reading →

Internet fragmentation and the rise of blockchain-based naming systems were firmly on the agenda at ICANN 75 in Kuala Lumpur today, with two sessions exploring the topic and ICANN’s CTO at one point delivering a brutal gotcha to a lead blockchain developer. Luc van Kampen, head of developer relations at Ethereum Name Service, joined a [...] Continue reading →

ICANN is a non-political organization, but it cannot tolerate the platform of the Russian standing to be the secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union. CEO Göran Marby took a fairly bellicose tone in denouncing the platform at two sessions of ICANN 75 in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, warning that the election of Russian nominee Rashid Ismailov [...] Continue reading →

The King is dead, long live the Queen! (Too soon?) ICANN announced today that Tripti Sinha will be taking over as chair of the organization’s board of directors this Thursday, with Maarten Botterman taking an unexpectedly early bath. The news was delivered by Botterman this morning during the opening ceremony of ICANN 75, being held [...] Continue reading →

Public Interest Registry has revealed the launch dates for its recently acquired gTLD .giving, and it seems the former registry will also play a prominent role. PIR has told ICANN it will run .giving’s sunrise period from October 13 to December 13. It’s an “end date” sunrise, where domains are only allocated at the end [...] Continue reading →

Nominet’s current non-executive director election may be illegal, according to a legal opinion commissioned by one of the candidates. Candidate Jim Davies, along with fellow former director Angus Hanton, say barrister Iain Mitchell KC has said that elements of Nominet’s voting practices are “clearly unlawful”, and they’ve asked Nominet to scrap them. If Nominet accepts [...] Continue reading →