July 02, 2026
18 min read
We followed every one of the 181.1 million domains that resolved in April 2023 across 26 DNS snapshots to June 2026, and did the same for a 246.8-million-domain 2025 cohort. The resolving web loses 13-15% of itself every year — a half-life of roughly five years — but the deaths are wildly unequal: Freenom's five TLDs went 99% extinct in the largest die-off ever recorded in the DNS, the cheap-promo gTLDs lose up to 95% of their web in three years, and Germany's .de keeps 84% alive. For registrars, investors, security teams, and anyone who links to anything.
June 24, 2026
15 min read
A follow-up to our .ai gold-rush analysis. We measured what a million .ai domains actually do — using our June 2026 typed-DNS crawl of 1,013,951 registrable roots across A, MX, NS, and TXT records. 94.3% resolve, but only 48.5% show any real-use signal and 20.4% carry a SaaS verification token; meanwhile ~9% sit on for-sale nameservers, startup adoption keeps climbing (YC cohorts ~23%→32%), and .ai is measurably one of the cleanest fast-growing TLDs for abuse.
April 02, 2026
27 min read
We analyzed 13.2 million .io records across 1.59 million unique domains and found a TLD split in two: 6,144 platform domains host 50% of all records, while 335,802 exist as single entries. The tech industry built its infrastructure on a country code belonging to a territory with no civilian population — and the UK's treaty to hand sovereignty to Mauritius puts that infrastructure on a clock no one in Silicon Valley is watching.
March 25, 2026
33 min read
We analyzed 4.13 million .ai domain names and subdomains — including 1.17 million unique root registrations — in the DomainsProject dataset and cross-referenced registry data, aftermarket sales, and government revenue figures to map the .ai explosion — from 48,000 registrations in 2018 to over one million today, and what it means for the 14,000 residents of Anguilla now collecting an estimated $93 million per year from two letters. Refreshed June 2026 with first-party DNS resolution data.
March 25, 2026
19 min read
We parsed 50.6 million hostnames in the .xyz namespace and found 13.3 million direct registrations generating 37.6 million subdomains. .xyz is the largest new gTLD on Earth and the 4th-largest gTLD overall — ahead of the UK's .uk and level with Brazil's .br. But a fresh DNS pass complicates the 'live infrastructure' story: only 42% of .xyz roots still resolve. The real .xyz is a barbell — a genuine developer and crypto core wrapped in a vast promotional-churn tail. Refreshed June 2026 with first-party resolution data.
March 24, 2026
26 min read
We parsed 52.2 million observed hostnames in the .cn namespace — the world's 6th-largest TLD — and ran a fresh A-record crawl against it. Only 49.0% of .cn hostnames return a live IPv4 address, far below the 58.9% whole-namespace rate and the 70-81% seen across European ccTLDs. China has 1.41 billion people and roughly 0.037 .cn hostnames per person, the lowest density of any major internet economy. The data points to why: a regulatory gauntlet of real-name verification and ICP licensing, a super-app economy where WeChat Mini Programs replace websites, and a namespace where a large share of names are registered or observed but never go live. Refreshed June 2026 with first-party resolution data.
March 23, 2026
19 min read
We observed 400.8 million hostnames under .net — the #2 namespace on the Internet behind only .com — against roughly 13 million registry registrations, a ~30x gap. .net's hostname mass comes overwhelmingly from provider infrastructure: CDN edge nodes, dynamic-DNS, ISP reverse-DNS, and mail/hosting back-ends that mint subdomains by the thousand. And 72.6% of those names return a live A record, well above the 58.9% whole-namespace rate. The TLD created in 1985 for 'network' organizations became literally the Internet's network layer. Refreshed June 2026 with first-party resolution data.
March 23, 2026
28 min read
We counted 50.3 million observed hostnames in the .br namespace — the 8th-largest TLD on Earth and the largest ccTLD in the Americas. Brazil built the most elaborate domain categorization system of any country: a heavily-structured second-level system with com.br for commerce alongside dozens of credential-gated professional zones for licensed lawyers, doctors, and engineers, mandatory government ID for every registration, and no public direct .br registration. A 9 June 2026 A-record crawl shows 60.6% of those hostnames still resolve — slightly above the whole-namespace average. Refreshed June 2026 with first-party resolution data.
March 22, 2026
26 min read
We analyzed 3.18 billion observed hostnames across 1,511 TLDs and found that ten island territories with a combined population under 500,000 host 39.1 million hostnames. Tokelau's free-domain .tk holds 7.2 million hostnames but only 2.5% resolve. Tuvalu's .tv funded the nation's UN membership. Niue lost control of .nu entirely. Three islands, three models, three very different outcomes. Refreshed June 2026 with first-party DNS resolution data.