The Public Interest Registry (PIR), which runs the .ORG gTLD, is looking for a new registry service provider. Identity Digital (formerly Donuts) currently performs this function, but its contract is nearing completion. PIR will put out a formal request for proposals in the second half of the year, but has already made its list of high-end criteria known.
Candidates should have minimum seven years of experience running an RSP across multiple TLDs, with at least three registry clients, over 500,000 domains, and at least 25 ICANN-accredited registrars on its books. According to Domain Incite’s report, the number of companies that meet such criteria does not exceed 10. Among them are GoDaddy, CentralNic, Verisign, ZDNS, Tucows, Nominet, and Identity Digital.
Surely many of the listed companies will be interested in concluding a contract with PIR. According to the registry’s most recent tax report, it paid a hefty sum of $15.6 million for registry services in 2021. If Identity Digital fails to retain its contract, the industry will face the largest TLD back-end migration in history. At the moment, the largest such migration was the transition of 3.1 million names in the Australian ccTLD .AU from Neustar to Afilias. Meanwhile, there are currently some 11 million .ORG domains on the internet.
