ICANN has issued an official warning to the Bulgarian domain registrar MainReg for violating its contractual obligations. While MainReg is not a major market player with approximately 30,000 domain names managed, primarily in the .COM, .NET, and .ORG gTLDs, it has been experiencing impressively rapid growth in recent years. The company began operations in 2015 and only gained around 10,000 registered domain names by 2024. However, over the course of the following year, the number of domains under its management nearly tripled.
Unfortunately, this happened mostly due to domain names being abused, as well as the failure to report such domain names. According to Domain Incite, ICANN’s official warning seems to refer to Domain Metrica data for the first time. It is a system developed by ICANN to aggregate information on domain name abuse based on third-party blocklists. According to Domain Metrica, as of November 2025, 48 percent of all domain names managed by MainReg were associated with malicious activity, including phishing. Although this figure declined slightly to 45 percent by January 5, the reduction is considered insufficient to demonstrate meaningful progress in addressing abuse.
Furthermore, at least one complaint submitted to ICANN suggests that the actual percentage may be even higher. MainReg has been given until January 28 to remedy the violations and report on corrective measures taken. Failure to do so could result in the loss of its ICANN accreditation.
