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.Club top level domain went MIA today

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.Club websites went down today as part of a DNS issue that has since been resolved.

Logo for .club domains has red dot and club in blue

The .club registry went down this morning, taking down all .club domains. The problem has been resolved.

The issue appears to have been with UltraDNS, a Neustar service. The UltraDNS system status page reported an incident starting at 10:30 UTC and ending at 14:15 UTC today. Details on the page suggest the issue primarily affected Europe and Asia.

Last year, GoDaddy acquired Neustar’s registry services business, making it the back-end provider for .club, .biz, .us, and many other domains. It then acquired the .club registry business itself this year.

The Neustar acquisition was a carveout. Neustar retained its UltraDNS DNS service.

In a statement, GoDaddy Registry said, “This morning there was a DNS service disruption impacting .club websites. The issue has now been resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

It’s unclear why the issue only impacted .club, but it’s possible .club was provisioned differently since it was owned by a third party until recently.

I’ve reached out to Neustar to learn more and will update this story if it responds.

GoDaddy finishes takeover of .Club, 19 more MMX domains

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

GoDaddy Registry adds 20 top level domains.

Logo for GoDaddy Registry

According to ICANN’s website, GoDaddy is now the official registry for .club and 19 of MMX’s (Minds + Machines) top level domains.

The company’s registry business, Registry Services, LLC, is now listed as the operator for .club and these 19 domains: Now , .abogado, .beer, .casa, .cooking, .dds, .fashion, .fishing, .garden, .fit, .horse, .law, .luxe, .rodeo, .surf, .VIP, .vodka, .wedding, .work, and .yoga.

Domain Incite reported that the four adult domains GoDaddy is acquiring from MMX (.xxx., .porn, .adults and .sex) switched to GoDaddy’s registry in the IANA database last week.

By my count, this leaves four domains from MMX’s stable still pending transfer: .NRW, .Miami, .Boston and .Bayern. I suspect MMX still needs to get buy-in from the local governments before these can be transferred.

GoDaddy is also acquiring .design from Top Level Design, but the assignment isn’t showing on ICANN’s website.

Update: On 7/28/21, MMX released this update:

Minds + Machines Group Limited (AIM:MMX), the top-level domain (“TLD”) registry company, is pleased to announce that it has received ICANN approval for the transfer of the majority of the Company’s 27 TLDs and related assets to Registry Services, LLC (“GoDaddy Registry”), an affiliate of GoDaddy Inc., pursuant to the asset purchase agreement dated 7 April 2021 (the “Asset Purchase Agreement”). The Company and GoDaddy Registry continue to work with ICANN and MMX government partners to obtain the necessary consents to transfer the remaining TLDs and related assets. All other conditions precedent for the transfer of these TLDs have been completed. MMX expects to complete the material procedural processes within the next two weeks; therefore, MMX and GoDaddy agreed to extend the longstop date from 7 August 2021 to 23 August 2021.

GoDaddy completes Neustar Registry acquisition

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

GoDaddy is now in the registry business.

GoDaddy and Neustar logos

GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) has completed its acquisition of Neustar’s domain name registry business, marking a big entry into the wholesale part of the domain business. The company announced the $218 million acquisition in April.

Neustar Registry, now named GoDaddy Registry, operates the back end for many new top level domains such as .buzz and .club. It also has contracts with countries to operate ccTLDs including .co and .us. It is also the operator of the .biz top level domain.

The transaction was a carveout of Neustar, which retains its DNS and DDoS businesses, as well as marketing data.

GoDaddy has committed to a number of safeguards to avoid a conflict of interest between the wholesale registry business and its retail arm.

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