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Registered Agents Takes a Two-Pronged Approach to New TLDs - Running Their Own and Providing Back-End Services to the Rest

Over 1,600 applications to run new Top Level Domains were filed with ICANN in the recently concluded 2026 round (the first chance to create new domain extensions since 2012). The impending flood of new TLDs not only creates opportunities for entrepreneurs to operate entire TLDs of their own, it creates opportunities for companies that provide the back-end services needed by all of those new registry operators to function. There are also companies taking advantage of both opportunities at the same time. We saw that today when Registered Agents Inc. (RAI) announced they have applied to run six new TLDs and are also diving into the registry services business with an all-new, built from scratch infrastructure, designed to give gTLD operators and ccTLD operators more choice for the technology behind their domains. That entity has been dubbed Astronym Registry™.

 

Christopher Ambler
RAI Director of Domain Registry

Astronym is the brainchild of Christopher Ambler, one of those longest tenured veterans in the entire industry with a career dating back to the late 1980s. Christopher has worked for Microsoft, Enom and GoDaddy and is current Director of Domain Registry at Registered Agents Inc. He moved from GoDaddy to RAI in 2022 with the goal of building "a new kind of registry, not driven by investor control, but focused on independence and quality - one designed to be an alternative for TLD operators, registrars and sovereign registries not wanting to use publicly-traded companies or investor-owned registry infrastructure solutions." Ambler added,  "Astronym is independent, modern and designed to give operators more control over the technology powering their domains.”

As for their new TLD plans, the company applied for .epic, .identity, .mark, .private, .registeredagent and .verified. .Epic is an apparent nod to the Epik domain registrar that RAI acquired in 2022 after it ran aground following financial malfeasance under previous ownership. Even so, they aren't the only party that has applied for the .epic extension.

Ambler said, "Registered Agents Inc wants to promote the TLDs to our six million-plus customers who care about independence from Big Tech. Big Data. And Big Corporate. With a larger business-to-business customer base than GoDaddy, the company is uniquely positioned to bring better TLDs to the business world than any other registry operator. We’re not building Astronym to only run six domains, we’re building the infrastructure for a much bigger registry business. We are actively pursuing partnerships with registry operators and also exploring opportunities to acquire existing registries from owners looking for an exit."  

(Posted Sept. 1, 2026)   

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