16% of Web3 companies use .io

By Karen, Foresight News

The historic moment when the UK relinquished sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius marked the end of British colonialism in Africa and sparked widespread debate about the future of the much-anticipated .io top-level domain.

What Happened?

Amid growing geopolitical competition, the UK and Mauritius issued a joint statement on October 3rd that they had reached a historic political agreement on the exercise of sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago. Under the terms of the treaty, the UK will agree to Mauritius's sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, where the US and UK military bases are located. Although the agreement is still subject to finalization of the treaty, both parties have pledged to complete the relevant procedures as soon as possible.

However, with the transfer of the Chagos Archipelago from the United Kingdom to Mauritius, the future of the .io top-level domain has become uncertain. This change may have a far-reaching impact on many websites with .io domain names. This is because the .io ccTLD was originally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and registered by a private British company, the Internet Computer Bureau (ICB), which is currently owned by Identity Digital of the United States.

The ".io" top-level domain name comes from the English name of the British Indian Ocean Territory: British Indian Ocean Territory, which is the abbreviation of Indian Ocean in the British Overseas Territory. The io domain extension has been in existence since 1997, and the earliest registered .io domain name was levi.io, which was registered by the clothing company Levi's in 1998. According to a 2014 report by the British newspaper The Independent, "The British government receives a portion of the profits from the sale of Internet domain names for the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Under the terms of the agreement with ICB, the British government receives an undisclosed share of the £60 fee for each .io domain name activated. Paul Kane, founder of ICB and an expert on Internet infrastructure, also confirmed that the British government received part of the fees paid for the use of the ".io" domain name."

Historically, ccTLD domain names have been removed five times

The future of ".io" is largely determined directly by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. However, it is important to know that ".io" is a country and region top-level domain name (ccTLD), and political considerations override technical and commercial factors.

As mentioned above, ICANN is a non-profit organization located in California, USA. It was founded on September 30, 1998 and takes over Internet-related tasks including the management of domain name and IP address allocation. According to Domain Incite, ccTLDs have only been deleted from the DNS root five times since ICANN was founded in 1998. Except for one case, the trigger for deletion in all cases was a change to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 list of the International Organization for Standardization.

1. ".yu" was originally a ccTLD owned by Yugoslavia in the Internet domain name system. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1992 due to civil war, but with the disintegration of the remnant of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, in 2006, ".yu" stopped accepting new registration applications in March 2008, but it was not until 2010 that ICANN finally deleted .yu from the DNS root.

2. ".tp" was originally the domain name of the Portuguese Timor country and region top-level domain (ccTLD), and was officially launched in 1997, when the country was still under Indonesian occupation. After the country gained independence in 2002 and was renamed East Timor, ISO assigned it a new code TL and removed TP from its list, but ".tp" was completely removed from the DNS root in February 2015.

3. ".zr" was originally the domain name of the Zaire country and regional top-level domain (ccTLD). Since Zaire resumed its name as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was later changed to .cd. In 2001, ".zr" was officially discontinued. ".zr" is the first ccTLD to be removed by IANA.

4. ".an" was originally a ccTLD domain name assigned to the Netherlands Antilles, an overseas territory of the Netherlands. After the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010, Curacao used the .cw domain name, Sint Maarten used the .sx domain name, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba obtained the .bq domain name, and ISO also deleted AN from its list. In 2015, the ".an" domain name was completely discontinued.

5. ".um" is a ccTLD domain name for the United States Minor Outlying Islands, but it is not in use. In 2007, ICAN deleted the .um domain name from the master list of domain names.

However, it is worth noting that ".su" is a special case. The ccTLD ".su" assigned to the former Soviet Union was activated on September 19, 1990. Although the Soviet Union has now collapsed, the domain name is still available.

Where will ".io" go in the future?

According to the ccTLD deactivation policy, ccTLD qualifications are determined by the relevant countries or regions assigned in the ISO 3166-1 standard. When a country or region is removed from the standard, its qualifications will expire and need to be discontinued after an orderly transition period. By default, ccTLD will be deleted after five years. The ccTLD manager may apply for an extension, but will need to provide appropriate justification. Extensions can only be extended for a maximum of five additional years, so the maximum possible period for formal delisting is 10 years. Of course, the ccTLD manager may decide to delist the domain name earlier at its discretion.

If it is determined that the eligibility of the ccTLD has changed, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will notify the ccTLD manager of its intention to issue a delisting notice at the time of the delisting decision. The ccTLD manager will have the opportunity to designate an alternate contact person to handle delisting-related notices.

As Domain Incite explains, for .io, the core question facing .io domain name registrants is whether the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) will continue to retain the IO allocation on the ISO list after the name change, and whether the archipelago still qualifies as a distinct territory to receive ccTLD status. If BIOT exists only as part of Mauritius and is no longer considered an independent territory by the United Nations, .io The survival of the domain name will face severe challenges and may be removed. On the other hand, if BIOT still maintains its independent territory and retains the qualification to obtain ccTLD, the situation will become more complicated. Of course, there is also the possibility that ".io" will follow the old path of ".su", but this probability is relatively small.

Which Crypto companies are using .io?

In the field of computer science, "IO" is often used as an abbreviation for "I/O" (i.e. Input/Output), which makes the .io domain name naturally suitable for technology-related services. Coupled with its simplicity, this top-level domain is very popular with technology startups and software companies, and it is also used by many projects in the Crypto field. In addition, the .io domain name is also the preferred domain name for video game projects, because "io" represents browser-based multiplayer games in game terms.

According to NetEase's "Technology World", "Glitch and GitHub Pages both use .io domain names for user-created websites and applications, and the Itch.io game store also uses the domain name. The domain name has made almost $40 million, which means that there may be more than one million .io domain names registered." It is worth mentioning that in 2021, the "Metaverse.io" domain name was sold for 1.14 million yuan, which is the highest .io domain name currently publicly traded.

Among the approximately 20,000 Web3 companies and projects included in Foresight Wiki, nearly 16% of the companies use .io domain names, including but not limited to Matter Labs, ZKsync, Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, Sei, Damus, CoinFund, Scallop, Mask Network, TrueFi, Raydium, DODO, etc. It is worth mentioning that Gate.io uses the name with the main domain name as the brand name.