Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig nic.EC. NS
Answer
nic.ec. 5 NS n2.nic.ec.
nic.ec. 5 NS dns41.cloudns.net.
nic.ec. 5 NS dns44.cloudns.net.
nic.ec. 5 NS dns43.cloudns.net.
nic.ec. 5 NS n3.dns.ec.
nic.ec. 5 NS a.lactld.org.
nic.ec. 5 NS dns42.cloudns.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
a.lactld.org. 3 A 200.0.68.10
n2.nic.ec. 170713 A 200.12.199.1
a.lactld.org. 3 AAAA 2801:14:a000:0:0:0:0:10
n2.nic.ec. 170713 AAAA 2801:0:60:0:0:0:0:1
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0