The ccTLDs Every Country OwnsNarrow moat
VeriSign (VRSN) — moat facet
148.6 million names held by governments — a competitor that cannot be bought, out-invested, or negotiated with.
The largest competing pool of domain names cannot be bought, out-invested or out-executed, because it belongs to governments.
Country-code top-level domains — .de, .uk, .cn, .nl, .br and hundreds of others — held 148.6 million registrations at the end of the second quarter of 2026, up 3.6% year on year.1 Each one is delegated to a national or regional authority, most of which are non-profits, government agencies or industry bodies. DENIC runs .de as a cooperative. Nominet runs .uk as a public-benefit company. CNNIC runs .cn under the Chinese state. VeriSign lists several of them as competitors in its own 10-K.2
They compete for the same registration, and they win it for reasons VeriSign cannot address. A German business with German customers has a genuine reason to prefer .de: local trust, local search behaviour, and often a cheaper price set by an operator with no profit motive. VeriSign's own risk factors note that local governments actively promote ccTLDs that it does not operate.
The boundary is set by geography rather than by anything VeriSign does: ccTLDs are national by construction. They are a poor choice for anything intended to be international, which is why the largest companies in almost every country still hold a .com. The pool grows with digitisation rather than at .com's expense.
VeriSign does operate one ccTLD — .cc, under an agreement with the Cocos (Keeling) Islands — which is the exception that illustrates the rule: the only country code it could get was one with six hundred residents.
Country-code domains grew 3.6% year over year, roughly in line with the market and slower than the new gTLDs. They take the registrations they were always going to take — national businesses serving national customers — and the boundary between that and .com has not moved in a decade.
Held by national and regional authorities — DENIC for .de, Nominet for .uk, CNNIC for .cn — most of them non-profits or government bodies with no profit motive and, in several cases, active government promotion. This pool cannot be bought at any price. It also cannot serve an international business well, which is why the boundary with .com has not moved in a decade.
Source: Domain Name Industry Brief, Q2 2026 ↗- ReportedCountry-code TLD registrations were 148.6 million at the end of the second quarter of 2026, up 3.6% year over year.Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report — 401.6 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains at the end of the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 9.1 million or 2.3% on the first quarter and 29.9 million or 8.1% year over year. The .com and .net TLDs had a combined 179.1 million registrations in the domain name base, up 3.0 million or 1.7% on the quarter. Country-code TLD registrations were 148.6 million, up 5.2 million or 3.6% year over year. New generic TLD registrations were 52.9 million, up 3.3 million or 6.7% on the quarter and 13.4 million or 34.0% year over year. — Q2 2026 · publ. 2026-07-23 · source ↗
- ReportedVeriSign names DENIC eG, Nominet and CNNIC among its registry competitors, notes that local governments actively promote ccTLDs it does not operate, and operates one ccTLD itself — .cc, under an agreement with the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.VeriSign, Inc., Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025 (SEC, CIK 1014473) — Item 1, Business. VeriSign operates the .com and .net registries under registry agreements with ICANN, and .com additionally under a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce (most recently amended by Amendment 35 on 26 October 2018, automatically renewed on the same terms on 30 November 2024 for a successive six-year term, renewing again on 30 November 2030 unless the DOC gives notice). The .com Registry Agreement runs a six-year term that must be renewed or extended by 30 November 2030 and contains a presumptive right of renewal, with ICANN able to terminate or refuse in certain prescribed circumstances; it permits an increase to the Maximum Price of up to 7% over the previous year in each of the final four years of each six-year period, the current period having begun on 26 October 2024. The .net Registry Agreement was renewed on 29 June 2023, runs to 1 July 2029 and permits increases of up to 10% each year. VeriSign remits $0.2575 to ICANN quarterly for each annual .com registration and $0.25 for each .name registration. It also operates .cc under an agreement with the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, operates .name and internationalised gTLDs, provides back-end services for .edu, performs the Root Zone Maintainer function for ICANN and operates two of the thirteen global internet root servers. Retail pricing is established by registrars; VeriSign must provide ICANN-accredited registrars with non-discriminatory access, faces marketing and bundling limits, must submit new Registry Services for ICANN review, and is subject to vertical-integration restrictions that apply solely to .com — obligations it states do not apply to ccTLDs and other gTLDs and may create a competitive disadvantage. Named registry competitors include CentralNic, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), DENIC eG, GoDaddy, Google, Identity Digital, Nominet, Public Interest Registry, Radix and .xyz. Employee headcount 928 (256 cost of revenues, 240 research and development, 432 selling, general and administrative). — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-05 · source ↗