.dog domain: who runs it and who can register

The IANA root record names Binky Moon, LLC as the sponsoring organisation for .dog, addressed care of Identity Digital Inc. (IANA). Binky Moon signed the original ICANN registry agreement on 4 December 2014 (ICANN). The actual running of the registry, the technical infrastructure and the nic.dog name servers, falls to Identity Digital Inc., which lists .dog among its portfolio and provides the administrative and technical contacts on the IANA record (Identity Digital). Identity Digital is owned by the private equity firm Ethos Capital, which stitched Donuts Inc. (Binky Moon's parent) and Afilias together under one brand in 2022 (Wikipedia).

These three roles are not interchangeable. The registry (Binky Moon/Identity Digital) holds the ICANN contract, sets the rules for the extension and keeps the master database of every .dog name in existence. A registrar is the accredited outfit you actually hand your money to, GoDaddy or Namecheap, say; it takes payment, processes renewals and talks to the registry on your behalf. The registrant is you: the name on the WHOIS record, the one who controls the domain until it lapses or gets transferred elsewhere. If something goes wrong with your .dog domain, it's your registrar you call, not the registry.

.dog has no eligibility restrictions. Registration is open worldwide, first-come first-served. You don't need to run a dog-related business, hold any accreditation, or show a local presence (GoDaddy). This is a registry-level rule set by Binky Moon under the base ICANN agreement, not something individual registrars decide for themselves. Any ICANN-accredited registrar offering new gTLDs can sell .dog names on the same terms.

With no vetting in place, the only thing that matters at purchase is whether your exact name is still unregistered, and whether the registry or a reseller has tagged it as premium. This dossier could not confirm whether Identity Digital runs a formal premium-pricing tier for .dog, so check the price shown by your chosen registrar rather than assuming standard renewal rates apply. Extras like ID protection, DNSSEC support or bulk discounts come down to the registrar, not the registry.

Moving a .dog domain between registrars works the same way any gTLD transfer does: you get an authorisation code from the losing registrar, confirm the move as registrant, and clear any registrar lock, clientTransferProhibited being the usual culprit. ICANN has also enforced a 60 day lock after a new registration, after a transfer, or after certain registrant contact changes. Worth flagging that the GNSO voted in 2025 to push towards scrapping that particular lock across gTLDs, .dog included, since it sits on the standard base registry agreement rather than anything bespoke.

Registration terms run from one year up to ten, with renewals typically added a year at a time, according to TLD-List and backed up by registrar data from Namecheap. .dog is a non sponsored gTLD, so it sits under ICANN's standard Expired Registration Recovery Policy, which gives a 30 day redemption grace period after deletion where the previous registrant can still restore the name, spelled out in ICANN's ERRP. What you won't find anywhere in the registry record is an actual restore fee for .dog. Registrars set that number themselves, and GoDaddy's help page only says redemption charges may start showing up around 12 days after expiry, with no figure attached.