Mark’s special guest speech on the opening of Day 2 at NamesCon 2022:

I want to thank Soeren, Richard, Leoni and the team greatly for the support Voices of Children Foundation is giving to Ukrainian children and refugees and the honour to speak to the top audience in our industry.

I also want to thank numerous companies from the DNS industry that reached out back in the spring this year and donated to the needs of refugees. We had 5 million people migrating in two months through Lviv alone, so your help assisted thousands of those in need. Radix, ShortDot, and industry veterans Philipp Grabens, Max Guerin, and my classmates from RSM, you have been our angels.

This war is hurting Ukraine and its people the most. Unfortunately heavy fighting is still everyday life in the East and South of the county with hundreds of dead and many more wounded daily on both sides, military and civilians. Even as Ukraine stories are not in the media prime spotlights, the situation is still as bad and unpredictable as earlier in the spring.

This war is hurting the rest of Europe too and the rest of the world. Sadly, big wars are driven by destructive cycles and we normally prefer constructive ones, especially in the DNS industry.

Reflecting on the domain name stats. The number of domain name registrations and sales was somewhat impacted by the corona havoc, and we are still feeling the consequences.

Some vectors of the industry are still doing good. .COM somewhat impacted, yet healthy growth is there to observe. We live in the digital millennium and growth is there to be.

newTLDs were particularly impacted, from 35m to 25m between 20/21, recovered somewhat to 30m in June this year and now again in decline.

As to the war zone countries:

.UA the ccTLD for Ukraine had hiccups around 2019, yet recovered, and surprisingly, despite the war, is back to its long term growth rate. This can be explained that many people and businesses were displaced and the economy in the West of Ukraine ironically benefited greatly from that situation. Yet, as there is one year latency of the domain name life cycle, the full picture can only be fully analysed in 2023.

Contrary, .BY and Cyrillic .БЕЛ, the Belorussian ccTLD and newccTLD combined registration numbers dropped since their dictator took a much stronger grip on the country lives, both offline and online. Many bright people had left the country, and there is more than 10% drop in domain name numbers since then.

I tried to check Russian ccTLD stats, yet, the site was not available, neither directly nor via VPN. Back in the spring, their government drove an enforced shift to use .ru domain only, forbidding the use of other zones, even .com for Google Statistics. So there has been a big site migration between the TLDs.

The secondary markets are too early to judge upon, yet as 2022 progresses, the stats show continuous growth, saving the industry from the global economic turmoil.

Coming back to Ukraine, I had spent most of the last six months in the country occasionally crossing the border to convoy medical aid. I have to note the majority of the branded charities, in particular the International Red Cross, failed to assist on the ground. The only big name that is here to see is World Central Kitchen.

I work with a number of local charities. These days more with SMART Medical Aid were we fundraised and brought missing medical equipment to the destroyed hospital and assisted with evacuation of badly injured children.

If you want to reach out and assist in any possible way please find me on ICANNWiki, LinkedIn or DNPric.es website.