Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig maltanet.net. NS
Answer
maltanet.net. 5 NS dns2.namecheaphosting.com.
maltanet.net. 5 NS dns1.namecheaphosting.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0