.top

Introduced	November 18, 2014 (General Availability)
TLD type	Generic top-level domain (gTLD)
Status	Active
Registry	.top registry
Sponsor	Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology Co., Ltd.
Registered domains	2,066,084 (24 January 2023)[1]
Registry website	nic.top/en

.top is a generic top-level domain, officially delegated in ICANN's New gTLD Program on August 4, 2014.

The domain name extension .top is managed and operated by the .top registry (registry backend ZDNS) which belongs to Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology Co., Ltd. in Nanjing, China and can be registered by anyone since November 18, 2014 without special requirements.

A second level domain under the top level domain (TLD) .top can consist of digits, letters, hyphens and specific special characters while it can have a length of 1 up to (a maximum) of 63 characters. Like most other TLDs, it can be registered for a period of at least 1 year up to (a maximum) of 10 years in advance. The private registration (WHOIS privacy) of .top domains is supported, as is the ability to register internationalized domain names (IDNs), which include the character sets Arabic, Chinese (simplified and traditional), French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

Development

• June 20, 2011, ICANN officially announced that the application for new gTLDs was to open in 2012.
• April 11, 2012, the application was submitted online. On June 9, 2012, it appeared on the ICANN public list.
• March 20, 2013, it passed initial evaluation.
• March 20, 2014, the registry signed a contract with ICANN.
• August 5, 2014, the domain entered the root zone of ICANN new gTLD.
• October 15, 2014, it entered its sunrise period.
• November 18, 2014, .top domains could be registered openly. Registration volume exceeded 10,000 on the first day.
• April 24, 2015, .top was put on record with Chinese national government department MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology).^[2][3]
• January 2016, .top released its IDN domains, supporting Arabic, Chinese (traditional + simplified), French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. The availability can be checked by .top whois.^[4]

Issues

.top domains are often used for malware and phishing, and the TLD is included in the list of those banned for some antimalware vendors such as Malwarebytes.^[5] .top is blocked by default by Snort rules.^[6]