.XYZ zone file nears 15,000, 30k following 24 hours

Nearly 15,000 domains in zone file and over half of them are at NetworkSolutions. 30,000+ domains registered following 24 hours.

The latest batch of zone files has been published, and .xyz had what looks to be a good first day.

The zone file includes nearly 15,000 domain names following the initial hours of launch. Zone files only include registered domains that have nameservers, so it usually undercounts domains by a bit.

.XYZ’s Daniel Negari told Reglike that registration numbers following 24 hours were 31,126.

I spot checked a couple of .xyz’s reserved domain names and didn’t see them in the zone file. The registry reserved domain names don’t appear to have nameservers.

The most interesting thing regarding the zone file is that 8,160 domain names have register.com’s nameservers. I checked a dozen of these domains and found all were registered using NetworkSolution’s Whois privacy (NetSol and Register are both owned by Web.com). NetworkSolutions charges $40 per domain, which is 3-4 times what competitors charge for .xyz. This doesn’t make much sense to me, barring some kind of bulk deal.

I know that .xyz did outreach to a number of firms ahead of launch, so it’s possible they coordinated with Network Solutions to register the domains. UPDATE: most of the Network Solutions registrations were part of a free promotion.

[This post was updated to include the numbers directly from the registry and to reflect fresh information regarding the Network Solutions numbers.]