ICANN 2026 and the Rise of AI Domains: Preparing the Internet’s Naming Infrastructure
ICANN 2026 marks a turning point for scaling the internet's naming infrastructure to accommodate AI domains, IoT, and digital twins, giving each AI a verifiable 'digital birth certificate' to prove identity and enable trusted interactions. To achieve this, the post calls for interoperable naming standards, strong DNS security (DNSSEC and DANE), clear verification and revocation flows, privacy-preserving identity and data portability, and governance models plus sandbox pilots to responsibly test AI namespaces.