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A textbook case: public funds burned for years on a service that was never viable. The money's gone, the work's gone, and predictably, so is the project. Same old story.
Which public funds ? DNS0.eu was a private initiative, from the NextDNS founders. DNS4EU is a public initiative, as mentioned in the news, and this one is still supported and actively developed.
Launch tweet:

"We are launching the first 100% European public DNS resolver! Free, sovereign and operated by an independent non-profit organization based in France." [1]

Shutdown announcement on dns0.eu:

"We recommend switching to DNS4EU and NextDNS" [2]

I get that NextDNS and dns0 have the same founders, but it strikes me as odd to recommend an American company to the users of dns0... Unclear to me what was the point of dns0 for them.

[1] https://x.com/dns0eu/status/1622912939501010945

[2] https://www.dns0.eu/

DNS0 was launched at a time when no other EU public DNS resolver was available. Today, you have DNS4EU that is actively funded and pushed throughout the EU administration (and critical infrastructures), so I believe that the DNS0/NextDNS founders saw that there was very little differenciating factors to their proposal, and decided to shut it down.

Had they "captured" a larger marketshare in the EU while they were ahead, situation might have been different today, but in my opinion it never happened.

I feel for the team behind it; running a DNS service can't be cheap, especially when you're trying to stay green. Maybe a community‑funded model could keep it alive? Just a thought.