On September 9-11, 2025, Belgrade, Serbia, hosted the 88th Members Meeting of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association (APTLD88),which brings together registries of national top-level domains (ccTLD) from across the Asia-Pacific region. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ took part in the event.
On September 10, Irina Danelia, Deputy Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, took part in a panel discussion on how ccTLD registries cope with challenges and stay up-to-date. In her presentation, she noted that the rapid pace of change in today’s world makes long-term forecasting increasingly difficult. Recent unexpected events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, have demonstrated this clearly. In these conditions, registries must remain flexible and ready for change in order to respond to challenges quickly.
Among the key trends, Danelia highlighted the rise of new technologies and markets, including social networks and online marketplaces. These platforms allow thousands of online stores to sell goods without registering their own domains or websites, which affects overall demand for domain names.
Turning to strategic priorities, she emphasized the importance of ensuring the security and stability of infrastructure, expanding the market by creating new products and making the domain space accessible to all categories of users.
Irina Danelia also drew attention to the issue of universal acceptance of non-Latin domain names and email addresses. The Cyrillic top-level domain .РФ has been operating successfully for 15 years, but the potential of IDNs is much broader. Russia is home to more than 270 languages, and to reflect this linguistic diversity, the Coordination Center has begun implementing support for characters from minority alphabets. To date, 25 characters from 17 languages have been introduced, and this work will continue.
Vadim Mikhailov, the Coordination Center’s infrastructure consultant, addressed a panel discussion dealing with automation and AI in the work of registrars and ways of making them more effective and safer. He discussed the use of AI solutions in domain registrars, analyzing suspicious activity and accomplishing educational and marketing objectives. He demonstrated how AI can be applied in infrastructure protection and DNS abuse prevention, in analyzing suspicious registrations and content, as well as in educational initiatives, marketing analytics, and customer support services.
In conclusion, Mikhailov stressed that artificial intelligence should not replace people, but rather complement them, creating a synergy of technology and expertise.
APTLD88 has now wrapped up its work. The next conference, APTLD89, will take place in February 2026 in Jordan.
