Donuts has responded to last Friday’s cybersecurity consulting firm Internet Identity (IID) report predicting “the eventual demise of any number of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and the websites populated within them—primarily due to financial underperformance”.
Donuts has responded strongly to debunk the report saying as the largest new gTLD operator they will not be closing down any new gTLD strings.
Here is the statement Donuts gave to thedomains.com exclusively about the “report”
“”One has to question the veracity of such a report, given, first, what we know about contingencies for just such a potential occurrence and, second, the report is woefully short on data and facts.
It’s important to point out that even if a gTLD fails financially, ICANN has procedures in place to ensure it doesn’t go suddenly dark (e.g., the emergency back-end system, and cash / letters of credit on deposit with ICANN).
There’s little to be concerned about on this front.
In fact, ICANN has backup systems in place that are more extensive than what exists for registrars that go dark (which happens fairly frequently), and even those instances leave no damage to end users.
Donuts will not sunset or shutter any of its gTLDs, and our company is skeptical of speculation about this kind of “market.” From our perspective, a portfolio approach brings stability to the equation, thanks to efficiencies and lower costs.
Donuts is highly profitable even though we administer some gTLDs with relatively fewer names. Specific gTLDs, such as .BANK for example, can command higher prices than can other generics, and perhaps are therefore more profitable per name than gTLDs with larger volumes. We speculate that some gTLDs with high volume are losing money, while some with lower volumes are very profitable. At best, there is no correlation between volume and profitability, as the report supposes.
Regardless, the market is seeing accelerating growth in new gTLD registrations, which are now surging well past 10 million (the document quotes a six-month-old statistic of five million). We’re seeing impressive growth in new gTLD registration, with the trend lines continually improving.”
