So a couple years ago Ethereum rolled out the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) The domains end in .ETH. During the rollout the .ETH domains had to be 7 characters or more. But now they are going to roll out the short .ETH domains. And they ain’t cheap.
EnCirca who just extended pre registration to August 9, are offering the following:
- 3-character domain names $1920
- 4-character domain names $480
- 5 and 6 character domains $25
- 7 and more character domains $25
You also must own the domain in another extension, Note that there is no support for Sunrise or TMCH. But during the pre-registration phase, priority will be granted to applicants with the longest held domain name in the traditional TLDs, such as .COM or .CA. Thus, this is the best opportunity for trademark owners to defensively register their short trademarks.
Now it seems like names are cheaper if you go straight to reserve.ens.domains
Domains being claimed must be 3-6 characters long
Each application must be accompanied by the fee for a year’s registration ($5 in ETH for a 5-6 character name, $160 in ETH for a 4 character name, and $640 in ETH for a 3 character name).
Christine Kim wrote a piece on CoinDesk.com back in April that outlined all the new changes going on with .ETH domains.
One point was, the new ENS system will eventually be opening up a three-step allocation process similar in part to the blind auction process for domain names shorter than seven characters. Finally, for all domain names longer than seven characters, users will have to pay an annual fee of $5 in order to guarantee ownership over the name.
Nick Johnson wrote on Medium that they want to keep domain hoarding down.
Also, imposing a cost on name registrations is necessary to limit ‘land grabs,’ where thousands of domains are registered for resale. The interim registrar achieved this with a deposit based scheme: funds bid on the name are locked up in a deposit contract, and refunded when the name is released. But experience has shown us that this is less effective than we had hoped.
Registrants seeking to resell the domain only have their funds locked up until they find a buyer, or until they release the domain, while registrants intending to put the domain to use must consider the funds locked up indefinitely. Any permanent registrar needs to change this balance, ensuring that speculative registration is at least as expensive as it is for legitimate users.
A few of my .eth domains in .com were acquired last year for decent prices. Not sure why .eth would be better than .com — what’s the value prop of an .eth over a .com?
Ethereum is pretty much dead. Price still down 85%.
That TLD does not even exist. Round 2 opportunity, anyone?
Indeed there is no .eth TLD so far. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance allows the holders of Ethereum accounts to connect .luxe domain names to their accounts (https://www.join.luxe/). However, I am unsure how successful it is.
Moderately, i would assume from this: https://ntldstats.com/tld/luxe
The .ETH TLD does exist, but on the Ethereum blockchain.
The value proposition is that merchants can advertise a human readable .ETH domain name to receive crypto-currency payments rather than a long indecipherable blockchain wallet address.
To access these blockchain domain names via Chrome, Firefox or Explorer, one needs a blockchain browser plug-in, such as Metamask. Browsers like Opera and Brave support it by default. So, if you are planning to pay for something via crypto-currency, you already have access to .ETH wallets.
.ETH is not an ICANN approved TLD and is unlikely to be approved by ICANN in the next round: .ETH is reserved by ICANN since it is on the 3-letter ISO country code list for Ethiopia. There is no effort planned to decide how these reserved strings would be released.
Our sense is that as long as these blockchain TLDs don’t cause collisions or leakage with the ICANN world, they will be left alone.
This is all garbage and it is a disgrace that registrars are peddling these “domains”. It reminds me of new.net where the web address in reality don’t work but the proposed solution is a browser plugin.
Ok, Thomas, thanks, for presenting the value prop.
Maybe the people/companies that acquired my eth___.com names have the same ones in _..eth. I haven’t checked, but I know the transactions were fast. So good luck!