[TEMP CHECK] Increase 3-letter ENS name registration cost to $1000/year

DAO-Wide Temp Check
1

I propose to increase 3-letter ENS name pricing to $1,000/year.

$1,000 is chosen as “the next round number” and we should let people do their renewals at this price for some time before increasing (and potentially then [not now] adopting a more structured plan for increases).

Other prices (4l, 5l) shall remain the same and can be discussed separately.

Note: I believe 5-letter price should stay at $5 and we should see if we can drive revenue from whales first.

USD Inflation

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Memetic potential:

I am championing a new meta where ENS clubs will extend their names multiple years into the future in order to fund bounties for ENS club-related features.

This meta is a schelling point to allow whales to fund ENS and receive development.

I predict this will overfund the DAO by millions of dollars this cycle alone. In advance of this meta, I propose an increase in 3-character ENS name pricing.

I speak only for myself, but with social influence I believe we can coordinate a mass renewal of the 999 club. ENS name marketplaces can prompt renewals to a specific date/time that everyone agrees upon.

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https://twitter.com/cory_eth/status/1763748854649036872

Here is a chart of the income the DAO would receive if this memetic action is successful:

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Second order effect to drive immediate long-term renewal demand at existing $600/yr
Those wishing to avoid the increase in fees are left with the option of advanced renewal, driving immediate revenue to the ENS DAO before all-time highs.

This should be widely marketed by all ENS service providers for radical transparency and to allow owners to pay for renewals at the current price if they wish.

Second order effect on 3-letter names no longer worth renewing at higher price
Names for which owners choose not to renew at the $1000 price represent a $600 loss versus the base case of doing nothing.

I predict enough 3-letter names will be worth $1,000/year and enough extra revenue will be generated by advanced renewals that the $600 loss on would-be renewed names is not worth consideration.

Implications for Treasury strategy
I further propose that the $400 delta in profits on 3-letter ENS name registration time is converted to ETH and held by the treasury in reserves for no less than 4 years from the date of proposal passing while the DAO continues to decentralize and attract more delegates, stakeholders, and shareholders.

No advantage for me
I will not renew any names until this passes (except to avoid expiration).

2

Am I suppose to add a poll or something?

3

So… basically you are proposing to squeeze community for money

sounds like not such a great idea

name pricing should be about consistency, if DAO will be adjusting name prices “situationally”, that will be sending bad signal to protocol users

2 Likes
4

While I’m not against the increase in price for short names (and more discussion of how to price things in general), I do think it needs the sort of data that your post is not supporting. These are the sort of questions we need to ask to have this discussion:

  • how many short names have been registered?
  • How does that compare to the total of latin letter combination for 3 and 4 letters?
  • How does that compare to the amount of dictionary words (I’d pick Wiktionary since it has words in many languages) of short length?
  • How does that compare over time? Are we increasing or decreasing?
  • How many of current name holders have registered for years?
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5

So far every single proposal to change pricing relied on some arbitrary reasoning, instead of some tangible research.

It’s not too difficult to conduct such research.

However even without some research, in the medium to long run impact of revenue generated from 3L names is immaterial. This is segment is just so small compared to the rest of the namespace.

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I’m happy to work on answering these questions. If someone has good data sources they want to refer, that would help.

Briefly I’ll note there are 1,000 3-digit names with ~$25,000 price on secondary. There are 17,576 3-letter names of which about 5,400 have been registered.

So yes there will be tradeoffs that I’m happy to analyze.

7

It seems like it would be a better idea to somehow introduce market pricing for renewals of valuable domains, rather than using the number of digits as the criterion.

Prices are too low and the appreciation in ENS name prices has benefited that squat on names the most. It would be great to figure out a way to change that behavior. As an added benefit, it may lead to more protocol revenue.

8

Just to be fully clear here,

Are you proposing for 3 letter names to be increased as in abc.eth as this is what your wording says

or

all 3-character names to be increased, this would include abc.eth but also 123.eth, g0d.eth, $$$.eth, :pirate_flag:.eth :heart: :heart: :heart:.eth etc etc

*if you are meaning all 3 character length names, then:

From reading all your points the only thing I get from it is that you want to squeeze all the other 3 character length clubs out by becoming to expensive, to leave the 999 club as the only one worth investing into

You are also trying to push 999 club members to mass extend names, this will also have the effect of secureing the floor for the 999 club

So you are throwing other clubs outside of the 999 under the bus for your own benefit ???

And, you are wanting the ENS Dao to do this for you…

This again proves the point that you can’t base renewal price on just character length, it needs to have different levels in each character length grouping

9

I would vote no on any changes to pricing to be honest. There has to be like seriously strong justification to introduce any changes. ENS must be stable to really serve as public good, any changes to pricing undermine that stability and that is a really high cost to pay.

As the protocol grows larger in terms number of users, so would the revenue. I would argue that there is a limit at which the revenue can be utilised efficiently. So if anything I would consider reducing the price of 5L names. Primary objective of ENS is not revenue, but growth. 3L and 4L namespace is immaterial, so changing those prices doesn’t really do much to protocol from any angle, whereas reducing 5L price can induce more growth.

1 Like
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fwiw, the ENS DAO did not create the 999 club. it’s completely novelty in effect and has nothing to do with ENS DAO officially or at all for all i’m concerned.