The new domain round links a Seychelles registry portfolio to the struggle over AFRINIC and millions of Internet addresses.

When ICANN published the applications for its next expansion of Internet domain names on 7 October, Africa accounted for 16 of the 1,615 submissions worldwide. A closer examination reveals an even narrower base of participation. Innovation Service Limited, a Seychelles company controlled by businessman Lu Heng, submitted 10 of those African applications. A single company therefore supplies 62.5% of the regional total.

The finding connects the new domain round to a larger struggle over Africa’s Internet resources. Lu also controls Cloud Innovation, the company allocated approximately 6.2 million Internet Protocol addresses by AFRINIC, Africa’s regional Internet registry. Cloud Innovation has called for AFRINIC to be wound up. While that company seeks the dissolution of the institution that issued its addresses, another company under the same businessman’s control is seeking to expand its role in the Internet’s naming system. Both ICANN and AFRINIC owe their communities a transparent account of how they are protecting the public interest.

Africa’s New gTLD Applications

The corporate link is unusually explicit. In Innovation Service’s .faq application, questions 104 to 108 identify Heng Lu as director, officer or partner, material shareholder, executive and ultimate controller. The company declares Seychelles incorporation as an International Business Company. These disclosures establish control, although they do not reveal his exact equity percentage.

Its 10 original applications are .connect, .donate, .faq, .fix, .larus, .real, .send, .uid, .visit and .vpn. The portal also displays replacement strings, including .nrs as the alternative attached to .larus. Counting those alternatives as additional applications would inflate the total. The records concern applications awaiting evaluation, not extensions already awarded.

The regional picture is stark. The other 6 applications come from Kenya Network Information Center for .safari, South Africa’s HOST AFRICA for .lodge, and 4 Mauritius companies seeking .audit, .therapy, .voice and .wealth. Africa’s share of the global total is approximately 0.99%. In 2012, it submitted 17 applications out of 1,930. After 14 years, the absolute count has fallen by 1. Seychelles is legitimately part of Africa, but corporate domicile tells us little about where ownership, expertise and economic benefits are distributed.

The Acquisition of .help

Lu’s entry into domain registries began before this round. The history of .help is documented in a commercial transaction that deserves closer attention. Frank Schilling’s UNR put its portfolio up for private auction in April 2021. Contemporary reporting identified Innovation Service as the buyer of .help. This was the acquisition of an existing registry business, rather than a new application submitted by Lu in the 2012 round.

The assignment agreement published by ICANN names UNR Corp., formerly Uniregistry Corp., as transferor and Innovation Service Ltd as recipient. It records Seychelles incorporation number 193273 and a registered address care of Abacus (Seychelles) Limited in Mahé. UNR sought ICANN’s consent on 20 May 2021. The execution table names UNR’s Shayan Rostam and Heng Lu, Innovation Service’s CEO, with dates of 6 and 7 April 2022, respectively. The document does not disclose the purchase price.

The agreement also draws a boundary around what was acquired. Clauses 8 and 9 expressly deny that the transaction conveys property or ownership rights in the extension or its constituent characters. Innovation Service assumed contractual rights and obligations to operate .help. ICANN had explained the broader UNR transfer delays by pointing to concerns about auction claims involving ownership and parallel blockchain namespaces. Its own position was clear that top-level domains were not property.

An IANA transfer report dated 4 January 2024 subsequently records Innovation Service as the proposed manager and completion of the relevant checks. That report should not be mistaken for the acquisition date. ICANN’s 2024 renewal notice, addressed to Heng Lu, provides further confirmation of the continuing relationship.

The commercial connections are visible today. The official .help website directs private domain sales to LARUS. Innovation Service’s .larus application describes plans to market the extension through the company’s existing relationships with Internet service providers, hosting companies and customers of its IPv4 operations. Lu’s own website presents .help alongside LARUS, the Number Resource Society and BTW.Media as related parts of his work. The expansion draws on an established commercial and advocacy network.

Cloud Innovation’s IPv4 Business

To understand its significance, distinguish the 2 systems. Domain names provide readable identifiers for Internet services. IP addresses allow networks to direct traffic. AFRINIC administers number resources for its region; ICANN coordinates the global identifier system and contracts with generic domain registries. The overlap here lies in corporate control and commercial strategy, rather than in a technical equivalence between names and numbers.

The address portfolio is substantial. ARIN’s president, John Curran, documented 4 AFRINIC allocations to Cloud Innovation between July 2013 and September 2016. The blocks he listed comprise 6,291,456 IPv4 addresses, commonly described in the dispute as approximately 6.2 million. In 2021, ARIN reported that most of their use was outside Africa, citing more specific routing announcements through providers in Hong Kong and the United States. That was ARIN’s assessment at the time, not a fresh measurement of every address today.

Lu disputes the premise that these activities breached the rules. The Associated Press reported that emails from his initial 2013 application disclosed Chinese customers and a proposed VPN service. He told the agency that Cloud Innovation shifted into address leasing in 2016 and 2017 and denied wrongdoing. That evidence complicates any account suggesting that overseas customers were necessarily concealed from the outset. The AP also clarified that the dispute was separate from allegations of address theft involving a former AFRINIC employee. Those allegations cannot fairly be attached to Lu.

The commercial mechanism nevertheless warrants scrutiny. Scarce IPv4 addresses can generate recurring income when leased to network operators. Cloud Innovation describes LARUS as its partner in supplying addresses to telecommunications companies and other customers. Resources allocated through a regional registry thus underpin a business serving a global market. Whether that model complies with the applicable agreements is contested; its economic dependence on the allocations is apparent from the service being sold.

The public record reviewed for this article does not trace lease receipts into the .help purchase, legal expenses or the new applications. It therefore cannot establish that a particular dollar earned from addresses issued in Africa financed any of them. What it establishes is a commercial network connecting address management, domain operation and advocacy, alongside litigation by Cloud Innovation against AFRINIC. A business benefiting from the regional allocation system is seeking to dissolve its administrator. That conflict warrants scrutiny without an invented financial trail.

Litigation and the Push to Dissolve AFRINIC

The institutional strain has a history. In July 2021, Cloud Innovation obtained a freeze on AFRINIC’s bank accounts, as the AP reported. AFRINIC’s case inventory records that the related attachment application was set aside on 15 October 2021. The freeze therefore should not be described as continuing today. Its significance is the demonstrated exposure of the registry’s operating finances to a dispute with a resource holder.

The costs to the institution are more directly documented, although the figures remain AFRINIC’s account. In its 12 March 2026 update, the board said the litigation had consumed millions of dollars in legal fees. It described challenges to the elected directors, opposition to the receiver’s discharge and an application seeking to stop further number allocations. Money spent defending those proceedings, the board argued, could have supported Internet development or lower member fees. These are material burdens on an institution serving many operators, whatever the eventual disposition of individual cases.

The proposed dissolution takes the conflict beyond a disagreement over 1 member’s resources. In July 2025, Cloud Innovation publicly argued that AFRINIC’s failed election and governance deadlock made winding up the organization necessary to protect the community. In March 2026, Lu argued that registries exercise enormous economic power while limiting their liability, and called for decentralization or a fundamental separation of their functions. His position deserves to be assessed as a substantive challenge to the registry model.

ICANN has rejected dissolution as the appropriate response. Its 16 July 2025 letter stated that number resources are not assets of the registry and warned that resource distribution must not serve a single creditor or member. It also raised concerns about unequal influence, disputed powers of attorney and the relationship between Cloud Innovation’s leadership and associated advocacy. These were ICANN’s stated concerns, not judicial findings that Lu had committed electoral fraud. On 14 May 2026, the Mauritian court allowed ICANN to intervene in the dissolution proceedings, after Cloud Innovation no longer objected to that intervention.

Another dispute shows why the wording of public claims matters. A May 2026 interim order restrained statements falsely attributing judicial approval to the leasing or commercialization of resources issued by AFRINIC and required removal of such representations. LARUS told The Register it had never claimed judicial endorsement of its products. Cloud Innovation disputed AFRINIC’s account and emphasized that the order was not a final ruling on leasing, ownership or its business model. AFRINIC’s case inventory also records an 11 June application to stay, review or discharge the order. An interim restriction on representations does not settle the entire commercial dispute.

Taken together, the records show a struggle over the boundary between commercially valuable rights and institutions charged with coordinating them. The .help contract preserves ICANN’s distinction between operating a registry and owning a namespace. AFRINIC maintains that number resources remain governed by agreements and community policy. Lu argues for a different distribution of authority and economic rights. His companies also have direct commercial interests in the outcome. The public should be able to see those interests clearly when evaluating proposals presented as reform.

Transparency and Accountability for ICANN and AFRINIC

ICANN’s board should require a public explanation of how its existing applicant screening and financial evaluation procedures address the relevant corporate relationships and substantiated risks, while protecting confidential screening records. Its assessment must respect the distinction between allegations and adjudicated findings. Seeking judicial relief does not automatically disqualify an applicant, and geography or nationality should not become substitutes for evidence. Applying published standards transparently is a minimum obligation when the same controlling figure appears across several parts of the identifier system.

The board should also publish regional participation figures by distinct applicant and disclosed controlling group, alongside domicile. At the standard evaluation fee of $227,000, 10 applications represent a benchmark of $2.27 million before any applicable reductions, refunds or operating costs. This does not establish Innovation Service’s actual payment. It demonstrates the scale of capital required and why application volume alone is a weak measure of opportunity for new African entrants.

AFRINIC’s board has a corresponding duty. It should publish independently audited legal expenditure, accessible updates on significant proceedings and clear explanations of decisions affecting allocations or membership. Directors’ relevant commercial relationships and recusals should be disclosed. Any settlement concerning disputed resources should explain its policy basis and consequences for members, subject to legitimate legal confidentiality. The community needs enough information to evaluate the board’s conduct, including the institution’s own past failures.

There has been progress. AFRINIC elected a board in September 2025 and announced Mike Silber as CEO designate in August 2026, with a start date of 1 January 2027. Recovery should now be measured through functioning allocations, credible accounts and accountable decisions. A routine, independently reviewed resource audit would help establish what present use can actually be verified. Clear rules, consistently applied with due process, would reduce the room for competing claims about private entitlement and regional purpose.

For readers outside Africa, the stakes are immediate. A global Internet depends on registries that can coordinate resources reliably while remaining answerable to their communities. If prolonged commercial disputes overwhelm those institutions, the consequences extend to operators and users who were never parties to the litigation. Africa’s experience tests whether the system can withstand concentrated commercial pressure while correcting its own weaknesses.

Lu’s companies are entitled to compete, earn revenue and contest decisions in court. African operators are equally entitled to institutions capable of serving their collective needs. ICANN and AFRINIC must make their decisions, interests and use of resources sufficiently visible for those rights to coexist. A continent supplying less than 1% of the new domain applications, with most concentrated under 1 company’s control, deserves a more convincing account of how Internet expansion will build its own capacity.