It sometimes feels like Web 3.0 and the real world exist in two different spheres, rarely interacting with each other. But I've seen a case which could have a significant impact.
The end of every web address is the top level domain - the TLD. There are quite a lot of them; some 1500 in total, with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) as the international regulator.
Some TLD's, like .com and .org reflect the function of the website - commercial for the former, social or political organisations for the latter. But many are derived from the ISO 2-letter country codes for the country of registration. So domains registered in Germany are .de, those in Turkey are .tr, etc.
In many cases, a company, person or other entity has to prove they have a connection to that place to get a domain with that TLD. Maybe they have to prove citizenship, or have a business registered there or whatever.
But for some, a geographical TLD has been used to create snazzy web addresses. It's also been a way of making money for an otherwise minor nation. Just think how many television companies have websites registered in Tuvalu so that they can get a .tv on the end of their website address !
The problem comes with the British Indian Ocean Territories. Their TLD is .io. Yep, the extension used by a massive number of technology related websites and applications, including some Hive ones like InLeo and Hivedex.
Image by The British government has decided to give the Chagos Islands, which is the island group that makes up the Indian Ocean Territories, to Mauritius, subject to approval of the treaty.
There's a lot of politics around it but it's supposed to be about de-colonisation, even though in reality the link between the islands and Mauritius was itself a colonial thing set up by the French before Britain took the islands off them during the Napoleonic Wars. They didn't bother to consult the islanders themselves, many of whom seem to have wanted proper independence, and the Maldives has a competing territorial claim. To make things even more complex, Britain is keeping a 100 year lease on Diego Garcia even though it's used by the Americans.
But whatever the politics, the state issuing the .io TLD will cease to exist. Mauritius already has .mu as their TLD.
Based on ICANN rules set up after complex disputes and shenanigans over the ownership and management of the .yu domain after the breakup of Yugoslavia, domains using .io will be unable to renew them when the current license period expires.
It will be interesting to see whether ICANN will break or re-write it's own rules due to the popularity of the .io TLD and the potential disruption it'll cause to tech businesses.
It's unlikely they'll leave it running but orphaned, they learned that lesson with the .su (Soviet Union) TLD, which is run by Russia but at so much arm's length that it's become a source of some very dubious registrations.
Other possibilities include allowing Mauritius to operate it but closely monitored (becoming one of the very few states to have two geographical TLD's), allowing some other state - probably the UK or US - to manage it, or even transferring it to be administered from Diego Garcia.
But I still think the most likely is that it'll be retired as renewals work their way through the system.
This will force a lot of Web3 and tech businesses to have to move to new domains. It'll be interesting to see whether they move to "vanilla" domains, or try to keep with the theme of trying for something imaginative.
They'll have to move fast if they want to register in Anguilla, the .ai TLD is getting pretty crowded !