Til Death Do Us .WED?
ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has placed the new gTLD .WED into the Emergency Back-End Registry Operator (EBERO) Program. In this case, the new gTLD registry operator, Atgron, Inc., experienced a Registration Data Directory Services failure and Nominet has been called in to serve as the emergency interim registry operator for .WED and is restoring service to the new gTLD.
This event could mean anything from a temporary hiccup to a full-scale meltdown by the registrar, but from looking at the registration figures, it doesn’t look good for .WED, as the current active registrations seem to number only 37, down from a monster high of 365 in May of 2016. A lot of this is due to the unconventional pricing structure and registration practices used with .WED, whereby you could buy a .WED domain, but only temporarily, as after 2 years the price would skyrocket to $30,000 or more a year. And yes, you read that number right. And yes, that is in USD.
Wedding Crashers
From Atgron’s point of view, this was done to keep the limited number of popular names up for grabs for all the smiling brides and grooms, and scare away those pesky domain investors who might lock on to the most popular .WED domains and then start reselling or renting them out. In fact, reselling a .WED domain name is expressly prohibited. The result was an almost total lack of interest from registrars (due to no domain investment or renewal fee revenue streams) and only a single registrar is even selling .WED, Nominate.wed. This seems to be a case of an extremely severe overestimation of the market demand for .WED, which is confirmed by the registration numbers.
The good news is that only 37 domain owners will be potentially inconvenienced.
EBERO Explained
EBERO has been designed to provide stability in the new gTLD marketplace and DNS by enabling a second level of support should a new gTLD operator experiences failure. EBERO clicks in when a TLD registry operator experiences problems sustaining any of the following five critical registry functions:
1) DNS resolution for registered domain names
2) Operation of Shared Registration System
3) Operation of Registration Data Directory Services (e.g., Whois)
4) Registry data escrow deposits
5) Maintenance of a properly signed zone in accordance with DNSSEC requirements
Once this happens, the selected OBERO provides only the most limited registrar functions, and will not supply any extraneous services or products, such as hosting, web development or analytics.