Chinese new TLD applicant appears to have been fake

A company that claimed to apply for 323 new top-level domains in ICANN’s 2026 round appears to have been fabricated. The incident shows why applicants should rely on official application lists, not promotional websites.

In August, a website appeared from a company calling itself Journey to the West Corporation, claiming 323 primary and replacement strings in ICANN’s 2026 new gTLD round. Many of the strings were China-related IDNs. The site has since gone dead, and the company did not appear on ICANN’s official application list.

Several details did not add up. The site used a Chinese government mailing address, registered its own domain with a non-Chinese registrar, and claimed backing from domain investors. It also listed strings that already exist as top-level domains, which a serious applicant would know.

For real applicants in the round, the practical effect was uncertainty. Had the claims been genuine, those strings would have created contention with other applicants. The official ICANN list is the only source that matters; anything published before it is unverified.

The motive is unknown. One possibility is trolling. Another is an attempt to get a real applicant to pay to make a fake application disappear. That would be unlikely to work because verification against ICANN’s list is straightforward, but the attempt itself can waste time and create doubt.

For domain holders, the lesson is to treat pre-release applicant claims as noise. ICANN’s published applications are the record. Anyone soliciting payment or offering to withdraw a competing application before that list is published should be treated with suspicion.