Comment by Pxtl

I was trying to find cases of it happening historically so I could check the RDAP record to see how domain registrars use it in practice... and yeah, the registrars seem to ignore a lot of the spec. While they do generally seem to follow the "lapse and re-register = new registration date", I can see how your example is something they probably would break. RDAP records don't appear to show historical expirations and reinstantiations and re-registrations despite the spec describing events for that. It's always just the basic event entries:

Registration date, last changed date, future expiry date. Even with domains that have well known dramatic histories. Which tells me the RDAP spec is not really enforced.

While I dislike "blockchain all the things" I can definitely see the argument for a blockchain-like global shared public ledger (albeit a not for-profit proof-of-work one) with full history for this sort of data.