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Remember The Draw? It was the mechanism ICANN used to figure out which new gTLDs from the 2012 application round would get a first-mover advantage, and it's coming back in 2026.
The Org is currently considering draft Applicant Guidebook language setting out the rules for how to pick which order to process applications in the next round.
There's no mention of Digital Archery this time. ICANN is sticking to the tried-and-tested Prioritization Draw, a lottery method in which applicants buy a paper ticket for a nominal sum ($100 last time) and ICANN pulls them out of a big bucket to see who goes first.
Applicants for internationalized domain names will have an advantage again, but it's arguably not as strong as in the 2012 round, when all the IDN applicants that had bought tickets were processed first.
This time, the draw will take place in batches of 500 applications, according to the latest version of the draft AGB language.
The first batch will contain at least 125 IDN applications — assuming there are 125 — and they will be drawn first, before any Latin-script strings get a look. In subsequent batches, the first 10% of tickets drawn will belong exclusively to IDN applicants.
In the 2012 round, the first 108 applications selected were IDNs. The Vatican won the lucky #1 spot with .天主教, the Chinese term for the Catholic Church, while Amazon was the first Latin-script application with .play (which Google eventually won but still hasn't launched, over 11 years later).
Due to California's gambling laws, applicants will have to show up to buy a ticket in person. If they can't make it, they can select an Angeleno proxy from a list provided by ICANN to pick it up on their behalf.
Last time around, The Draw took over nine hours to sort all 1,930 applications and was the social highlight of the community's calendar. Santa Claus even showed up.
Source from Domain Name Wire
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