You make it sound like you forgot and it was immediately taken, but if it was a .com it would have gone through the expiration process and not have been working

You make it sound like you forgot and it was immediately taken, but if it was a .com it would have gone through the expiration process and not have been working for quite some time. Nobody noticed website wasn't online for weeks before it would have been dropped and re-registered. HugeDomains is a massive operation though, I think they are the largest drop catcher at this point and that's their business model. If they are selling for $2500/ea roughly, they need to sell around 1:300 to remain profitable. A lot of people try to imagine what a better domain market looks like and a more fair way to distribute things. I don't think I've ever heard a proposal that looked better. Since we know there is economic value, people are going to invest heavily (look at crypto space) and not create any real value. I think we ended up at a local maxima because of the organic development of domain names and the internet. There might be a scenario where everyone acted in some communist good faith best effort system, but humans just aren't capable of really doing that.