

Ask HN: What would happened if an operator of a gTLD went out of business? - tinyProton

With all these new gTLDs everywhere, I am wondering what would happened if I bought a domain and the operator of the gTLD behind it went out of business. Will the entire gTLD and all the second-level domains registered under it disappear? If this is what is going to happened, then I guess these new gTLDs are not reliable for any serious project. I am interested in reading your opinion about this.
======
arcdigital
ICANN would take control and find a new operator. There is a pretty long and
tedious process involved with operating a gTLD, including proving that you
have the appropriate finances and resources to support the domain.

~~~
wmf
In addition, ICANN requires registries (the companies that run TLDs) to escrow
their data so that it won't be lost in case they go out of business.
[http://icannwiki.com/Data_Escrow](http://icannwiki.com/Data_Escrow)

~~~
ohashi
Also the underlying software managing the registry is often outsourced to
companies like NeuStar. I imagine if that is the case, they could keep
operating it without issue until a new caretaker is found/organized/whatever.

------
guillon
No, they would not disappear, there is a specific procedure in the ICANN new
gTLD applicant guidebook for this issue. No change for the end user but is is
possible that transfers or special zone file operations would not work during
a certain period of time. This has not happened yet so...difficult to answer.

------
mariuolo
I suggest you to read the story of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RegisterFly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RegisterFly)
.

That was only a registrar, not the central gTLD registry, so I imagine it
would be worse.

