The (refundable) escrow payment would indeed be a possible solution.

I feel to some degree governments are also responsible for this, by not making consistent use of *.gov domains.

Take for example sunbiz.org, the Florida business register. For 20+ years sunbiz.org was the official domain, until they switched to dos.fl.gov in 2023. The average joe may have heard about "Sunbiz", but was the domain sunbiz.com, sub.biz, sunbiz.net ... who knows?? How would anyone know? All of this could have been avoided by using *.gov everywhere in the first place.