DotGreen announced on Friday that it has withdrawn its application for .green from ICANN’s new gTLD program. We were surprised to hear the news, particularly after all of the effort that DotGreen has put into building a community and a movement around its application.

While we at Innovative Auctions agree with Annalisa that the ICANN Last Resort auction would have been a poor choice for the DotGreen Community, we believe that the Applicant Auction is a great tool for single-string applicants who want to see their TLD used for a community purpose.

The Applicant Auction is a voluntary mechanism. Without consensus among all the applicants for a contention set that it is the right settlement approach, there is no auction. In other words, without DotGreen’s consent, the .green string would never have been eligible to participate in the Applicant Auction. Had DotGreen wished to continue seeking alternative resolution strategies, they would have been free to do so until the string was assigned a date for participation in a Last Resort auction. By withdrawing their application, however, they have cleared the way for the remaining applicants to participate in the upcoming Applicant Auction on October 21, if they so choose.

The Applicant Auction is intended to ensure that all applicants benefit from the contention resolution process. Unlike the upcoming ICANN last-resort auctions, our model ensures that applicants who do not win are compensated fairly for withdrawing their application. The price paid by the winning bidder in the Applicant Auction is used to compensate all other bidders equally—no matter how low their bid.

For DotGreen, participating in the Applicant Auction was guaranteed to yield either sole-applicant status for the .green TLD or a nearly one-third share of the auction revenues. These funds could have been used to recover the application fee and to support projects relevant to the DotGreen Community. Considering that the average winning price in our previous auctions was around $1.5 million, participation in the Applicant Auction could have been a significant contribution toward DotGreen’s ability to achieve its mission, whether it won or lost.

Following DotGreen’s withdrawal, the remaining applicants for .green are free to participate in the next Applicant Auction on October 21. While we’re sorry that DotGreen won’t be joining us, we wish them the best of luck with their project.