More Than 22,000 Domains Still Use Legacy Uniregistry Nameservers. Our DNS Tests Raise Questions.

Nearly seven years after Frank Schilling sold Uniregistry’s registrar and marketplace to GoDaddy, more than 22,000 domain names are still listed against the old marketplace’s nameservers. For domain investors, the question is simple: do those domains still work?

We tested 20 recently listed names. None returned a successful DNS result in our tests using Cloudflare’s public resolver, and four retested through Google’s resolver failed too.

That doesn’t mean all 22,000 domains are offline. It doesn’t tell us who, if anyone, is responsible for the failed lookups. Our tests were ordinary public DNS lookups, and we found no evidence that the nameservers have been compromised.

But it does raise a question for any investor who once used Uni Market to show a sales page and take enquiries. If your domain still points there, is it working?

What we tested and what happened

On 9 November 2026, Who.is listed 22,367 domains against ns1.uniregistrymarket.link and 22,360 against ns2. That is Who.is’s own index, not a live count from every registry. Its list of recent delegations runs up to 8 November 2026, so these aren’t all leftovers from 2023.

We took 20 names from that recent list and asked Cloudflare’s public resolver for their A records. All 20 returned SERVFAIL, with Cloudflare reporting “no reachable authority”. That isn’t the same as NXDOMAIN, which would mean the name doesn’t exist. It means the resolver couldn’t get an answer from the servers the domain is delegated to. We then retested four of the 20 through Google’s public resolver, and all four returned SERVFAIL as well. A control domain resolved normally.

Google retest: adamscountynews.com, ikiwiki.org, lekki.com and tradedapp.com, all SERVFAIL.

These results relate only to this sample and the time of testing. The 20 names come from the newest end of the list and could behave differently from the other 22,000. Public resolvers are also an imperfect witness, and a proper audit would repeat the checks over time. Our initial results suggest other domains on the same infrastructure may be affected, but further testing is needed to establish how many, and why.

Several of the names look like related sets, such as adamscountynews.com, kerncountynews.com and buttecountynews.com, which were listed within days of each other. They may belong to the same owner. We don’t know.

It is also worth remembering what Elliot Silver found in September 2024. He reported nearly 50,000 domains still on the old nameservers, according to DomainTools, and said they were forwarding to Afternic landing pages that pointed buyers to GoDaddy’s $119.99 Domain Broker Service. Either that behaviour has since changed, or it was never uniform. Don’t compare 50,000 with 22,000. They are different datasets.

The history in brief

Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry began in 2014 as a registrar built for domain investors. Its marketplace, Uni Market, offered sales pages and enquiry forms.

On 11 February 2020, GoDaddy announced it was buying the registrar, the marketplace and Schilling’s portfolio of more than 350,000 names. The price wasn’t disclosed in the release. Domain Name Wire later reported it was under $200 million. The registry side, which ran new extensions such as .link, was not part of the deal.

By 2023 the standalone marketplace had gone. Whether owners who had set their names to its nameservers were told to move isn’t clear from the public record.

What the records show for UniregistryMarket.link

The nameservers sit under the domain UniregistryMarket.link. We checked its public records on 9 November 2026. This is supporting background. It doesn’t establish who is responsible for the failed lookups.

A few points are worth drawing out.

The expiry date. The registration record shows an expiry of 23 October 2028, so the domain isn’t available for ordinary registration. A third party registering an already-expired nameserver domain, the textbook DNS risk, doesn’t apply today. Expiry dates can change through renewal or transfer, and this one shouldn’t be read as a countdown to anything.

The registrar. 1API GmbH is the HEXONET registrar, which CentralNic (now Team Internet Group) bought in 2019. Key-Systems is a separate registrar in the same group. We haven’t confirmed when the domain moved to 1API. A change of registrar, on its own, doesn’t show a change of owner, a change of service responsibility or anything improper.

The DNS hosting. The domain is registered at 1API, but its own DNS is hosted on domaincontrol.com servers, which are GoDaddy’s. That tells us where the parent domain’s DNS is hosted. It doesn’t tell us who owns the registration or who operates ns1 and ns2.

The IP addresses. At the time of our tests, ns1 resolved to 52.89.18.51 and 54.152.30.238, and ns2 to 18.217.16.210 and 34.247.146.68. All four sit in address ranges registered to Amazon Technologies. That indicates Amazon-hosted network infrastructure. It doesn’t identify the customer or organisation running the nameserver service, and it doesn’t suggest Amazon operates it.

Responsibility for operating the tested nameservers hasn’t been established.

The .link sale

Schilling’s registry business, UNR, sold .link to Yoni Belousov’s Nova Registry. IANA recorded the transfer on 19 May 2022. In a September 2022 Domain Name Wire interview, Belousov and general manager Vaughn Liley talked about link-in-bio products, URL shorteners and Web3.

It is tempting to join the dots between the registry sale and the nameserver domain. The records don’t. IANA lists Nova Registry as the manager of .link and Tucows as the technical contact. Neither Team Internet nor 1API appears. Buying a registry doesn’t hand over the registrations inside it, and UniregistryMarket.link is just one registration among many. This is background. Nothing we found links Nova Registry to the failed lookups.

What could go wrong

Domains delegated to these legacy nameservers depend on the continued availability and integrity of that DNS infrastructure. If control of the relevant authoritative services were ever lost, domains relying on them could potentially be affected. The extent of any exposure would depend on each domain’s delegation, DNS configuration and security protections. We have found no evidence that this has occurred.

Researchers have documented how forgotten DNS dependencies can lead to takeovers. APNIC’s study of lame delegations is the best starting point. The DNS Institute’s write-up of “Sitting Ducks” covers a related attack. It doesn’t map onto this case, and we are not suggesting it is happening here.

For most owners the likelier problem is more ordinary. A domain that doesn’t resolve can’t show a landing page, take enquiries or receive email. For an investor holding a premium name, one missed enquiry can cost more than years of renewals.

Questions we think should be asked

We haven’t contacted any of these companies yet, so none has had the chance to respond to our findings. These are the questions the public records leave open, and we’d like to see them answered.

GoDaddy: Do you still operate ns1 and ns2.uniregistrymarket.link? Are they meant to be answering? Who holds UniregistryMarket.link today, and who operates the servers its nameserver names point to? Were former Uni Market users told to move?

Nova Registry: Did the 2022 .link sale involve any arrangement over legacy Uniregistry infrastructure?

Team Internet / 1API: Within the limits of customer confidentiality, can you say whether the domain moved to you as a routine transfer or a change of registrant?

These are fact-finding questions. They aren’t allegations.

If you’re at GoDaddy, Nova Registry, Team Internet or 1API, or you own one of these domains, we’d like to hear from you. Get in touch and we’ll update this article, so readers get the correct picture.

What to do if you own one of these names

Check where your domain’s nameservers point at your registrar. If they are ns1.uniregistrymarket.link or ns2.uniregistrymarket.link, load the domain in a browser and send yourself an email at it.

If it doesn’t work, move to nameservers you control, copying across your email and other DNS records first. If you want to sell it, use a marketplace that exists today. A paid-up registration doesn’t mean your sales page works.

Key takeaways

• On 9 November 2026 Who.is listed 22,367 domains against ns1.uniregistrymarket.link and 22,360 against ns2. Its ‘recently delegated’ list includes names added as late as 8 November.
• We tested 20 names from that recent list using Cloudflare’s public resolver. All 20 returned SERVFAIL (‘no reachable authority’). Four retested through Google also failed. This is a small sample of the newest names, not a census.
• UniregistryMarket.link is registered with 1API GmbH until 23 October 2028, and its own DNS is hosted on domaincontrol.com servers. The nameserver hostnames resolved to four IP addresses in Amazon ranges. None of this shows who operates the legacy nameservers.
• We found no evidence that the nameservers have been compromised. The practical worry for owners is a site, email or sales page that has stopped working without anyone noticing.
• We haven’t contacted GoDaddy, Nova Registry, Team Internet or 1API yet. Responsibility for the tested nameservers has not been established.

Findings reflect public records and DNS responses on 9 November 2026. Who.is counts, WHOIS records and DNS responses change. Our resolution test covered 20 domains on one day and should be read as a sample, not a measure of all 22,000. Dated copies of the evidence are retained. We’ll update this article if anything changes.