Also, they were originally trying to get several already-in-use psuedo-TLDs recognized including .onion, .i2p, .bit and .gns, but they had to compromise.
http://www.potaroo.net/ietf/idref/draft-grothoff-iesg-specia...
They were trying to get .gns, .zkey, .onion, .exit, .i2p and .bit recognized.