Public Interest Registry is currently in the process of evaluating potential replacements for Identity Digital as a registry service provider for .org domains.



This comes ahead of an official request for proposals later this year. The company has outlined a set of criteria that candidates must meet, including at least seven years of experience running a registry service provider across multiple top-level domains (TLDs), with a minimum of three registry clients, over 500,000 domains, and 25 ICANN-accredited registrars. With these requirements, the number of qualified companies is expected to be less than a dozen. Some potential candidates include GoDaddy, CentralNic, Verisign, ZDNS, Tucows, Nominet, and Identity Digital themselves. If a transition to a new registry service provider were to occur, it would be the largest back-end migration in the history of TLDs, surpassing the previous record of 3.1 million names moved from Neustar to Afilias in 2018. The migration of .org from Verisign to PIR in 2003, which was considerably smaller with 2.7 million names, serves as a comparison. Based on PIR's recent tax return, Afilias received $15.6 million in 2021 for providing registry services. PIR plans to issue the request for proposals in the second half of 2023.

In my opinion, such a significant transition in the domain name system has the potential to impact millions of organizations and individuals who rely on .org domains. The careful evaluation and selection of a new registry service provider is crucial to ensure a smooth and secure transition. It will be interesting to see which companies meet the rigorous criteria set by Public Interest Registry and how they will handle the immense task of migrating such a large number of domains.