At the end of the day, it’s still first-come, first-served.
It’s like lining up for a limited product. You may leave earlier, but you’re walking. I’m on a motorcycle. I arrive first. The rule hasn’t changed, only the tools have.
Domain registrations work the same way. Whoever successfully gets the order to the registry first gets the name.
Take .app as an example. When it launched, I placed pre-orders at multiple registrars. The results were very different:
Gandi performed the best.
Name.com was second.
GoDaddy didn’t secure a single one for me.
The rules didn’t favor anyone, but infrastructure, registry connections, system performance, and execution speed clearly matter.
The iNet.app and EIP.app I currently hold were both secured during that launch.
First-come, first-served has never meant equal speed. It simply means whoever completes the process first wins.
