.koi
Is .koi a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
- Journey To The West Corporation
A short, pretty suffix for koi hobbyists and Japan-inspired brands; charming, but the natural market is too small to sustain serious use.
koi and pond hobbyist businesses, aquatics retailers, Japanese-aesthetic lifestyle brands, and a thin tail of startups wanting a short evocative ending
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round (flagship tier). Their catalog line: “The fish that swims upstream into a dragon.”
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a single-species noun owned by a small, passionate breeder-plus-hobbyist economy (breeders, dealers, clubs, show circuits, equipment suppliers) who would credibly hang their primary identity on the animal's own name.
Also an animal-species noun sold to a pet/breeder/supplier economy, but the audience is mass consumer rather than a tight specialist hobby, so it rests on general pet commerce instead of a self-identifying niche community.
The category-level version of the same bet, serving aquarium and pond trade plus enthusiasts, but it is the broad bucket koi sits inside and so must serve many unrelated buyers rather than one coherent hobby.
- Journey To The West Corporation · first recordedJourney To The West Corporation
“.koi · Flagship · “The fish that swims upstream into a dragon.””Journey To The West Corporation