This is hardly a typical domain registration experience. Would be truly unfortunate if a hypothetical decentralized alternative had a similar bug that let some

This is hardly a typical domain registration experience. Would be truly unfortunate if a hypothetical decentralized alternative had a similar bug that let someone else register and already-owned domain, as that bug would likely invalidate the entire structure of the registration and bring the whole system down as people exploited the vulnerability to steal every possible domain in a decentralized manner. At least this centralized solution can fix it and adapt.