Lets establish the design goals:

1) support as many native languages as possible (Chinese)
2) prevent phishing attacks by allowing similar looking names.
3) backward compatibility

I put a high value on #3 which means that any name should be compatible with existing DNS systems.

Lastly, subdomains should be handled in the value section of the output and thus '.' is not permissible in the name.

im thinking of a fixed octet and an ascii character at the end.

This is *not* a discussion about TLDs or UX.
This is just a discussion for what are permissible strings for names in the name-record store.

First suggestion, lowercase alphanumeric.

Second suggestion, lowercase alphanumeric and periods, but only if you owned the suffix without any periods (so you can emulate subdomains). Still manageable complexity.

Also maybe lowercase alphanumeric and any symbols, with above suffix rule.


Stuff that currently appears after the TLD in your browser bar is not part of the name resolution and is independent of this system so it would remain the same.