.xyz is a top-level domain name proposed in ICANN’s new gTLD Program, consisting of the last three letters of the Latin-script alphabet. XYZ.com and CentralNic are the registries for the domain, which was created by entrepreneur Daniel Negari.
๐ Launch and Growth
.xyz became available to the general public on June 2, 2014. It was the largest of its cohort of newly-released TLDs, and Negari paid US$185,000 for the domain.
โ๏ธ Legal and Promotional Issues
In mid-2014, Network Solutions gave away potentially hundreds of thousands of .xyz domains by placing them into some customer accounts on an opt-out basis. This resulted in VeriSign bringing a lawsuit alleging that Network Solutions paid for these domains using advertising credit.
๐ Registration Milestones
By August 2014, registered .xyz domains reached 428,806, though only roughly 10,000 of the 351,457 promotional domains were in actual use by July 2015. In November 2015, .xyz reached 1.5 million registrations, possibly boosted by Google’s decision to use abc.xyz for its corporate website.
๐ฐ Pricing and Classes
On June 1, 2017, .XYZ launched the 1.111B class .xyz domains, priced at US$0.99 per year. This class consists of six- to nine-digit numeric combinations between 000000.xyz and 999999999.xyz.
๐ Security Concerns
In 2023, the Anti-Phishing Working Group stated that .xyz and .shop domain names were in the top 5 for malicious domain registrations. It was estimated in 2022 that 6.62% of extant domains in the .xyz TLD were malicious.
| Year | Registrations | Rank Among TLDs | Key Event |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 428,806 | โ | Public launch and Network Solutions promotion |
| 2015 | 1.5 million | โ | Google adopts abc.xyz |
| 2020 | 3,182,692 | 7th | โ |
| 2022 | 4,563,254 | 4th | 93% of registrations lasted only one year |