Desi Networks Registry has formally notified ICANN org that it is unilaterally terminating its obligations under the contract to manage the new gTLD .DESI. This is only the second case in history when a company refuses to manage a commercial domain delegated to it (unlike branded domains, the number of cases of which has long since exceeded a hundred). The “pioneer” in this sense was the .WED, whose Atrgon registry declared its insolvency in 2021.
Despite the uniqueness of the event, it was quite to be expected. To date, none of the sites on domain names registered in the .DESI zone has responded to requests - including the nic.desi site of the registry itself. And the Desi Networks Twitter account (a microblogging service blocked in Russia) was last updated in 2018, according to Domain Incite.
It's difficult to figure out why .DESI fails. The names in this domain zone are available from most of the leading registrar companies, and the well-respected CentralNic acts as a technical operator. The word desi itself is used to refer to the natives of India, and given the population of the country and the size of the diasporas, it is easy to understand that the potential audience of the domain is more than one and a half billion people. And yet, the best result for the domain in almost 10 years of its existence was 4330 registrations in December 2018. Now (data as of the end of March 2023) 1425 names are registered in the domain.
In accordance with ICANN's policies, the corporation will initiate a Registry Transition Process for the new .DESI generic top-level domain. It is a kind of auction in which registries can participate who wish to take control of a domain and have confirmed that they have the technical and financial capabilities to do so. However, there is little chance of success in such a procedure: it is likely that the Desi Networks registry itself tried (and failed) to sell its business before terminating the contract with ICANN. If no interested bidders show up, ICANN will have to appoint a temporary operator to manage the domain zone. However, such an operator can be appointed even now, for the period of preparation of the transit procedure.
