The United States’ country code domain is changing hands for the first time since 2001. On October 1, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration named Identity Digital as the new administrator of .us, ending a run that began with Neustar and passed to GoDaddy Registry after it acquired Neustar’s registry business in 2020.
Identity Digital inherits a registry that has been shrinking. GoDaddy Registry’s July 2026 report, the most recent available, counts 1,858,827 domains under management, down 24.17 percent from a year earlier, a drop of roughly 592,000 names. Still, the latest monthly indicators look more encouraging: new registrations in July ran 5.56 percent above July 2025, and the renewal rate ticked up slightly compared with the same point a year prior.
NTIA has not announced pricing details yet, but at the outgoing wholesale rate of $6.50, July’s domain count works out to roughly $12.1 million a year in registry fees, which registrars pay rather than the government. NTIA describes the contract as running at no cost to itself.
The contract runs 36 months, including a transition period of up to nine months, with option periods that could extend it to seven years total. That timeline gives registrars and hosting companies that resell .us domains a real migration window to plan around, since moving a registry operator takes considerably more than a flip of a switch.
Identity Digital, formerly known as Donuts, already runs .io and holds the .au contract, and it has operated Anguilla’s .ai registry since January 2025, a migration the company says moved more than 600,000 names without downtime. That track record likely factored into the selection, especially since NTIA’s final request dropped an earlier rule that would have barred registry affiliates from also acting as a .us registrar.
Akram Atallah, Identity Digital’s chief executive, said the company is pleased the government selected it to help run .us, and that a smooth handoff remains the immediate priority. For now, questions around wholesale pricing and how the new operator will enforce the US nexus requirement remain open, though NTIA says it will share more details as the transition moves forward.
