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One-letter .lu domains could be bought for peanuts

Kevin Murphy, November 3, 2020, Domain Sales

Luxembourg’s ccTLD registry is auctioning off 2,825 one and two-character .lu domain names, and so far bids are looking very affordable.

The names have been reserved for two decades, but Restena began releasing them to trademark owners in August, and yesterday the landrush phase began.

The company has set up a special website for the auction.

After the first day of bidding, only one domain, j.lu, has attracted a bid in four figures (€2,000).

All 36 letters and numbers have at least one bid. Another 15 internationalized domains — single letters with diacritics or accents — have not yet attracted bids.

The domain with the most action so far is hu.lu — I wonder why — with a €500 top bid.

It’s still early days, and obviously most auction activity happens towards the end.

The plan is for the auctions to run for a minimum of 12 more days, but they could be extended into December.

On December 15, anything not already registered will be released for registration on a first-come, first-served basis.

Luxembourg tops 100,000 .lu domains

Kevin Murphy, July 8, 2019, Domain Registries

Luxembourgish ccTLD .lu has grown to more than 100,000 domain names for the first time.
ccTLD operator Restena said last week that the domain crossed the threshold June 21. At the end of the month, it had 100,056 domains under management.
While it’s certainly not a lot for a ccTLD, it is when compared to the size of the country it represents.
Luxembourg has a population of under 600,000, so in theory 1 in 6 Luxembourgish people own a .lu domain.
That’s close to the ratio as you’d see in the UK, with its 66 million inhabitants and 12 million .uk domains, though it trails Germany’s 1:5 and the Netherlands’ 1:3.
The per capita numbers are probably not all that useful, however. Restena said that 75% of its domains are in corporate hands.
Many companies are “based” in Luxembourg for tax reasons, which may have some impact on reg numbers.
Restena said that about 3,000 names of the 100,000 are “reserved” and not actively used.
The growth of .lu has not been particularly fast. My records show it has only grown by about 3,000 names over the last year.