I know most reading this realize the following but just in case a few stumble on this thinking some investable new gTLD has gone out of business that is not the case.
The .liasion TLD could only ever be used by a single company/organization as a private brand extension, it could never be invested in by a domain investor, it could never be registered by a member of the public, etc.
An analogy might help, getting a brand TLD is kind of like a company taking out an option on some property that they might plan to use in future. In many cases they later decide it is not worth it, and let it drop so they did not keep paying ICANN for the right to hold that extension. Yes they lost money on the option. But no one else did.
So don't think this is some extension people invested in, or used for their sites, and lost money on (other than the one organization that applied for it for internal use).
To my knowledge of the 700+ available new gTLD for
general use only one, .wed, has gone (sort of) defunct (in process although existing registrations still being supported per ICANN process for such eventualities). That .wed extension never achieved even 500 registrations, launched with a single register onboard, and had a bizarre pricing scheme for second year. It also had competition from similar TLDs that did not have the same limitations.
Anyway, if someone tells you a new gTLD goes out of business ask them if it is a brand TLD, which was always only for private use by one organization, or a generally available new gTLD.
It may not seem like a big thing, but pretending this is another TLD deactivated hurts the entire domain industry, because it will be misinterpreted by some casual readers in the public as though a domain I might have invested went out of business and people lost money. Let's be careful in our wording, please. It is not just new gTLDs that gets hurt by misinterpretation of a brand domain decision to not use the TLD anymore.
I am not saying it is impossible that a TLD will go out of business. ICANN has procedures in place in the slight chance that will happen, and with increasing consolidation in the registry space things are probably more secure than if most were single TLD companies. I had domains at a registrar that went out of business last year. ICANN procedures protected my interests and I lost no domain as a result.
Bob
Added Note: In many cases there is even an obvious reason why the .brand is not being retained. For example in this case the brand TLD had been owned by Liasion Tecknologies , and that company was
acquired by the large Canadian-based tech firm Open Text. So it makes little sense to continue to hold the old brand TLD when the former company is now merged into a larger one with a different name.