The question is, does everyone belong on the leader board?
The gTLD scene is not without scandal. The .xyz gTLD has more than 27,000 new registrations that list the name server as belonging to Network Solutions (NetSol) and its parent Web.com. Before the launch of .xyz this week, NetSol had only 16,790 domain name registrations among all new gTLDs to date. After .xyz launched, NetSol’s registration number sky rocketed to 44,476 .xyz registrations accounting for 62.25% of all NetSol registrations. What caused this giant spike in registrations?
Michael Berkens of thedomains.com has reported that .xyz second-level domains were complimentary to existing NetSol customers for one year. The giveaway was opt-out, meaning customers selected to receive this promotion would have had to open an email and click a link to prevent the registration of a domain name in .xyz that matches their current .com. Read a copy of the email. Because of the opt-out requirement, of those 27,000 new registrations within .xyz, it is very plausible that not many of the owners know about their ownership, which may well result in the second-level domains expiring after the complimentary one-year trial period.
As of June 5, NetSol held 72% of the .xyz registrations compared to the less expensive register GoDaddy.com, which holds 12% of the registrations. Compare this to .club, where the percentages are much more realistic: GoDaddy.com has a 33.23% share with 21,568 .club registrations compared with Network Solutions, which has only a .33% share with 211 registrations.
At least some of those 27,000 are likely genuine. However, considering the large spike in NetSol registrations compared with the other registrar statistics for other new gTLDs, most appear to be registered as a result of the promotion. It will be interesting to see if other new gTLDs use this tactic to increase numbers early on.
New gTLD Developments — will they shake the leader board up when they go live?
To date, of the 1,930 total applications submitted to ICANN, 1,739 remain active applications. Of those applications, 426 have signed Registry Agreements, 304 have been delegated to the root zone, and 232 have sunrise start dates. Read from Source