Pending Delete (Drop)

Pending delete is the last status in a lapsed domain's lifecycle: after the redemption period ends without recovery, the registry marks the name pendingDelete for about five days, during which it cannot be renewed or transferred. At the end of that window the domain drops — it is purged and released back to the public, available to register again first-come-first-served. This moment is what backorder and drop-catching services race to capture for desirable names. Pending delete is purely a registry-level state in the traditional DNS system; it has no analog in the on-chain ownership layer, which is why keeping a tokenized domain's underlying registration renewed still matters. Source: ICANN EPP status codes.