.io domain name or be removed? 16% of Web3 companies will be affected

Written by Karen, Foresight News

The UK relinquished sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory and transferred it to Mauritius. This historic moment marks the end of British colonialism in Africa and has sparked widespread discussions about the future of the highly anticipated .io top-level domain.

What happened?

In the increasingly intense geopolitical competition, on October 3, the UK and Mauritius issued a joint statement, reaching a historic political protocol on the sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago. According to the terms of the treaty, the UK will agree to Mauritius' sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, including the Diego Garcia Island (the location of US and UK military bases). Although the protocol is subject to the finalization of the treaty, both parties have committed to completing the relevant procedures as soon as possible.

However, with the UK transferring sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the future of .io top-level domains has become unclear. This change could have a profound impact on many websites that own .io domains. The .io ccTLD was originally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and registered by a British private company Internet Computer Bureau (ICB), which is currently owned by Identity Digital in the United States.

".io" is a top-level domain name derived from the English abbreviation of British Indian Ocean Territory, which is the abbreviation of Indian Ocean in British Indian Ocean Territory, a British overseas territory, in the Internet domain name system. The .io domain extension has been in existence since 1997, and the earliest registered .io domain name was levi.io registered by the clothing company Levi's in 1998. According to a report by the British Independent in 2014, the British government profits from the sale of internet domain names from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. According to the terms of the protocol reached with ICB, the British government receives an undisclosed share of the £60 fee for each activated .io domain name. Paul Kane, the founder of ICB and an internet infrastructure expert, also confirmed that the British government receives a portion of the fees paid for using the ".io" domain name."

In history, ccTLD domain names have been removed five times

The future of '.io' is largely determined by the Internet naming and digital Address allocation agency ICANN. However, it should be noted that '.io' is a country and regional top-level domain name (ccTLD), in which political factors outweigh technical and commercial factors.

As mentioned above, ICANN is a non-profit organization located in California, USA, established on September 30, 1998, to take over tasks related to the Internet, including managing domain names and the allocation of IP addresses. According to Domain Incite, since its establishment in 1998, ccTLD has been removed from the DNS root only five times. In all cases except one, the triggering factor for the removal was a change to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 list of the International Organization for Standardization.

1. '.yu' was originally the ccTLD owned by Yugoslavia in the Internet domain name system. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated due to civil war in 1992. However, with the dissolution of the remaining alliance countries of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006, '.yu' stopped accepting new registration applications from March 2008. It was not until 2010 that ICANN finally removed '.yu' from the DNS root.

2. '.tp' was originally the top-level domain (ccTLD) for the country and region of Portuguese Timor, officially launched in 1997 when the country was still under Indonesian occupation. After gaining independence in 2022, the country was renamed to East Timor, and ISO assigned the new code TL, removing TP from its list. However, it was not until February 2015 that '.tp' was completely removed from the DNS root.

3. '.zr' was originally the top-level domain (ccTLD) of the Zaire region. Due to the restoration of Zaire's national name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was later changed to .cd. In 2001, '.zr' was officially discontinued. '.zr' was the first ccTLD to be removed by IANA.

4. '.an' was originally assigned as the ccTLD domain name for the Netherlands Antilles. After the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010, Curaçao started using the '.cw' domain, Sint Maarten started using the '.sx' domain, and Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba obtained the '.bq' domain. ISO also removed AN from its list. In 2015, the '.an' domain name was completely discontinued.

5. ".um" is the ccTLD domain name for the United States Minor Outlying Islands, but it is not in use. In 2007, ICANN removed the .um domain name from the domain master list.

However, it is worth noting that ".su" is an exception. The ccTLD ".su" assigned to the former Soviet Union was launched on September 19, 1990. Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the domain name is still in use.

Where does the future of ".io" lie?

According to the ccTLD deactivation policy, the eligibility of ccTLD is determined by the relevant country or region assigned in the ISO 3166-1 standard. When a country or region is removed from this standard, its eligibility will expire and it needs to be stopped after an orderly transition period. By default, the ccTLD will be deleted after five years. The ccTLD administrator can apply for an extension, but there needs to be a valid reason. The extension can only be extended for a maximum of 5 years, so the longest possible period for formal removal is 10 years. Of course, the ccTLD administrator can decide to deactivate the domain names in advance.

If the eligibility of the ccTLD changes, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will notify the ccTLD manager of the intention to issue a revocation notice when it decides to deactivate it. The ccTLD manager will have the opportunity to designate an alternate contact to handle the deactivation-related notices.

As noted by Domain Incite, the core concerns for .io domain name registrants are whether the renamed British India Ocean Territory (BIOT) will continue to retain IO assignments on the ISO list and whether the archipelago will remain uniquely eligible for ccTLD status. If the BIOT exists only as part of Mauritius and is no longer considered an independent territory by the United Nations, the survival of the .io domain name will face serious challenges and may be scultled. Conversely, the situation would be further complicated if BIOT remained its independent territory and remained eligible for ccTLDs. Of course, there are also ". io" on the ". su" old way, but this probability is relatively small.

Which crypto companies are using .io?

In the field of computer science, 'IO' is often used as an abbreviation for 'I/O' (Input/Output), which makes .io domain names naturally suitable for technology-related services. Combined with simplicity, this top-level domain is highly favored by technology startups and software companies, and is also used in the crypto field. In addition, .io domain names are preferred for video game projects because 'io' represents browser-based multiplayer games in gaming terminology.

According to the Netease account 'Tech World', 'Glitch and GitHub Pages both use the .io domain for users to create websites and applications, and the Itch.io game store also uses this domain. The domain has earned nearly 40 million dollars, which means that there may be over a million .io domains registered.' It is worth mentioning that in 2021, the domain 'Metaverse.io' was sold for 1.14 million yuan, which is the highest publicly traded .io domain at present.

Among the approximately 20,000 Web3 companies and projects listed in Foresight Wiki, nearly 16% of them use .io domain names, including but not limited to Matter Labs, ZKsync, Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, Sei, Damus, CoinFund, Scallop, Mask Network, TrueFi, Raydium, DODO, etc. It is worth mentioning that gate uses the name with the main domain name as the brand name.

As for the future of .io domain names, Foresight News will continue to follow.

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