A couple weeks ago I was renewing a bunch of expired domains and my renewal order at Dynadot got stuck with the "pending approval" status. After a few days, it completed however one of the domains didn't renew – that was a .desi domain. I placed an order for it again and got stuck again...messaged the support while googling the issue just in case and found the answer in a DomainNameWire article:
What can be the development on this? Given that the extension failed to gain popularity there might be no other operator willing to pick it up. Will it be maintained by EBERO indefinitely? Or can all the existing registrations get terminated after a while?
Googling the extension (site:.desi) shows only adult content sites living on it, which gives the "shut down" scenario a higher probability as there seems to be no reputable project(s) to go vocal against it.
Also, not unlikely we are going to see more of the unpopular and not profitable gTLD extensions following the same path soon.
The Dynadot support told me while they can't renew the domain, its registration is not going to be cancelled either despite the expiration. So the extension is now in limbo – waiting for some kind of resolution. Apparently there is no precedent for this situation, as it were only the private (brand-owned) TLDs to be cancelled before.ICANN has placed the top level domain .desi into the Emergency Back-End Registry Operator (EBERO) program.
Earlier this year, TLD operator Desi Networks told ICANN it wanted to terminate its contract for .desi. This was the first company to voluntarily terminate its agreement for a non-brand domain name.
EBERO was set up to ensure domain names still functioned if their registry operators shut down or otherwise didn’t meet their obligations to keep top level domains running.
ICANN said it is seeking a new operator for the top level domain and will issue a request for proposal to find that operator.
There are about 1,900 domains in .desi, but many of them are used for adult content sites. Desi is a term used to refer to people of South Asian birth who live abroad.
What can be the development on this? Given that the extension failed to gain popularity there might be no other operator willing to pick it up. Will it be maintained by EBERO indefinitely? Or can all the existing registrations get terminated after a while?
Googling the extension (site:.desi) shows only adult content sites living on it, which gives the "shut down" scenario a higher probability as there seems to be no reputable project(s) to go vocal against it.
Also, not unlikely we are going to see more of the unpopular and not profitable gTLD extensions following the same path soon.