Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig ns2.dnsprotect.com. NS
Answer
ns2.dnsprotect.com. 5 NS ns2.dnsprotect.com.
ns2.dnsprotect.com. 5 NS ns1.dnsprotect.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns2.dnsprotect.com. 5 A 198.255.110.58
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0