Crazy story đ
Last week, the British government transferred sovereignty of an island in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius.
So what? What does this have to do with the disappearance of GMX, Magpie, Rabby, etc.?
All of these protocols use the .io domain suffix!
The .io domain suffix is associated with the Chagos Islands (Indian Ocean territory), which the British recently lost control over.
This will result in the complete loss of the .io suffix, widely used in the tech and gaming industries!
It hasnât made headlines in the tech press, but it should have!
Whatâs going to happen exactly?
Once the treaty is signed, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will remove the country code "IO" from its specifications.
You must understand that each suffix belongs to a specific country (.fr â France, .us â USA, .ai â Anguilla, .tv â Tuvalu, etc.).
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which creates and assigns top-level domains, uses this specification to determine which country-based top-level domains should exist.
Once "IO" is removed, IANA will no longer allow new .io domain registrations.
This will mark the end of .io!
In 1990, IANA created and delegated the .su top-level domain to the USSR.
One year later, the USSR collapsed. At the time, no one knew what to do with the .su domain, so they did nothing.
Today, .su is a "digital wild west," used by cybercriminals and supremacist groups.
In 1992, Yugoslavia dissolved into smaller states.
Again, IANA didnât know what to do with the .yu suffix.
Most of the domain records for .yu were stored at the University of Belgrade, which was raided by Slovenian academics who took control of those records.
The situation became so chaotic that in 1994, IANA's founding manager, Jon Postel, personally intervened, overriding IANA's regulations and forcibly transferring control of the .yu domain back to the University of Belgrade.
Only through these crises did IANA learn not to leave things in limbo when a country collapses!
In 2006, Montenegro declared its independence from Serbia. With IANAâs experience, they retired .yu in 2010, replacing it with .rs (Serbia) and .me (Montenegro).
After a long period of confusion, the rule is now clear: when a country disappears, its domain suffix disappears within 3-4 years!
This means .io will face the same fate, even though itâs very popular in crypto protocols.
That doesnât mean the protocols using this suffix will vanish.
After all, a protocol is a collection of smart contracts on-chain, so it's technically impossible to make them disappear.
However, the front-end interface used to easily interact with these smart contracts will disappear if nothing is done.
Additionally, some .io domains have been bought and sold for huge amounts!
For example, the nftIO domain was sold for $2M after being purchased for $1.5M.
As time passes, .io domains will lose their value since they are bound to disappear. Itâs best to sell them quickly.
As for DeFi protocols using .io, they should sell their domain name while thereâs still time and find another domain suffix.
The sooner this is done, the better!
