But if you check the domain's expiration date, it's far away in year 2035.

To the best of my knowledge, a domain can only be renewed in advance for up to 10 years.

(that could be the reason for that status).

No, not being able to renew the domain due to the max renew ahead policy (it's registry-specific but also 10 years for .me) does not result in the clientRenewProhibited flag for .me.

(2035 is less than 10 years from now)

(Yes, but it expires at 2035-05-20. If you count years by rounding up to integers, there's not enough time room to renew it an additional year. It would make it 11 years.)

Same for dog years, but why are we inventing ways to make it seem more than 10 years out when registries, quite reasonably, just use the date normally?

> To the best of my knowledge, a domain can only be renewed in advance for up to 10 years.

That is the rule for COM/NET/ORG. ccTLDs can do what they please.

That said, as a registrar I highly recommend people renew important domains for 9 years. It gives you maximum buffer but allows you to transfer to a new registrar even if your old or new one has the same misconception hard coded.

What domain zone let you register for more than 10 years?

None do at present, AFAIK. But ccTLD could do that, if they wanted to; there is no rule against it, unlike the gTLDs.

That's weird there no such zones then. It would be nice to be able to pay for a domain 50 years in advance.

It’s an accounting issue. It is also why all coupons, gift cards, etc. expire. When you buy a domain, or get a coupon, the company basically has to treat that as a debt that the company owes you, and this has to go on the books as a kind of liability. No company want too much of that.

The DNS isn't 50 years old. There's absolutely no certainty your payment for the last year's will mean anything. Also if you're older than 35, you'll probably be dead. If you're not dead you probably won't care about the domain any more. Certainly all current politicians and the current political and economic systems will be dead. It's unclear there will be any reason to still have the domain and that it won't be blocking some innovative economic activity. It's unclear there will still be an internet.

It won't protect you against the country hosting the registry being nuked but it will likely shield you from future price hikes because not honoring pas renewals would quickly get the registry a reputation for being a fraud. Which is probably also why there is a limit - no registry wants to be bound by arbitrary long timed liabilities.

I think they just flagged all locks in their admin portal. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/zoTQbwn

The status that actually says the domain is suspended is serverHold.

Came to say this, ICANN says:

“This status code is set by your domain's Registry Operator. Your domain is not activated in the DNS.”

Also the serverDeleteProhibited status is active, which ICANN also admits is a weird and rare one:

“This status code prevents your domain from being deleted. It is an uncommon status that is usually enacted during legal disputes, at your request, or when a redemptionPeriod status is in place.”

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/epp-status-codes-2014-...

Mind you, this is ICANN's description, which applies to global domains and not country domains like .me. Country registries can (and do!) assign different meanings to these statuses; for example in .pl clientRenewProhibited has a completely different meaning.