The Public Interest Registry (PIR) has summed up the results of the tender announced in March of this year to act as a technical operator of domain zones under its management. We are talking about 10 gTLDs, including .charity, .foundation, .gives, .giving, .ngo, .ong, as well as the ccTLD .org, .संगठन and .机构. But the main one, of course, is the .ORG, in which about 11 million names are registered.
The winner of the tender was Identity Digital (formerly Donuts), thus retaining its contract with PIR. Previously, Afilias was the technical operator of domain zones managed by the Public Interest Registry, but it was acquired by Identity Digital in 2022. Domain industry experts were almost confident that Identity Digital would retain its position. First of all, because changing the technical operator would imply the transit of more than 11 million domain names, and such a procedure would be associated with serious technical difficulties and risks. In addition, do not forget that the registry and the technical operator have a very close relationship. Identity Digital is owned by private equity fund Ethos Capital. In 2019, it practically acquired the Public Interest Registry. More precisely, the parties agreed on a deal, but it was blocked by ICANN, recalls the Domain Name Wire, reporting this news.
The amount of the new contract has not been announced, but it will become known once the non-profit organization PIR publishes its financial report. In the meantime, we can remember that in 2021 the registry paid the technical operator $15.6 million.
