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ICANN charges a $25000 per year maintenance fee for Top Level Domains so a few unpopular TLD's have gone out of business and ceased existing over the years.

Anyone can apply to own a TLD, the application fee is about $180,000, but you will spend lots more on lawyers and lobbying. The chance of success depends on existing trademarks and suchlike.

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> Anyone can apply to own a TLD, the application fee is about $180,000,

Applications have been closed for years at this point. You'll also need a time machine.

But I'm not sure if ccTLDs even have any fees? That's all from the primordeal internet built on cooperation and good will. Domains based on tiny island territories (not even tiny island nations) usually don't have a whole lot of reliability engineering; hope they're cheap.

is that the case for country/territory TLDs? .mp is the TLD of the Northern Mariana Islands

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