I'm fucked.
The beginning...
I've obtained this domain back in 14 Aug 22. The registration was easy enough. No roadblocks of "tHiS iS A pReMiUm dOmAiN" (foreshadow) and all that. The price was the normal registration that NameCheap have set for .icu domain. I haven't used the domain because I don't have time to build any use case for it. For the past 2 renewals, it was priced at $12.98, which is normal for .icu.
Until this happened.
On 10 May 25, I renewed one of my domain and wanted to check how much to renew this one. So, I added the renewal to my cart and this showed up:-
My first thought was "WTF is this? That's not right.". It literally pisses me off with how much they want me to renew it for. So, I checked on other registrars that has .icu and :-
They all priced above $500 which is fucking mental. My suspicion is that the creator of .icu (which is ShortDot SA) all of a sudden apply this domain as "premium" domain. And I was right :-
This one says it all. Any possible move I do to this domain will get me fucked. Why does NameCheap let me register it? Why all of a sudden ShortDot SA labeled it as "premium" when it wasn't before? I don't know what to do with this. It's the only short domain I obtained and everything I was planned to do to this domain are now out of the gate.
Summary.
In the end, I'm gonna let it expire. I'm sharing my frustration here so that if anyone wanted a cheap short domain name, pick VERY carefully or this will happen to you. If this also happened to you, let me know via email below. Now if you excuse me, I'm gonna find another one to replace this. And one more thing...