A suggestion for future MIN_REGISTRATION_DURATION and GRACE_PERIOD

I actually think it’s more like a key-value database than a domain name. And I do spin those up/down.

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We’re only talking about .eth names here. Subdomains can have whatever rules the parent owner decides. They will be much cheaper and can be used for more disposable usecases such as ec2 instance.

ENS is much bigger than just .eth names

Do we have a list of affected users and names? Actual real users who found a name they wanted and couldn’t get it? Or is this just a hypothetical concern?

I would like to see a lot stronger justification for restricting protocol usage. We’re talking about the protocol returning an error for people who are paying to use it how they want. A lot of them.

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Prior to the increase of the premium cost name traders sniped virtually every expiring ENS name directly interacting with the contracts giving regular users no chance at all of getting the ENS names they wanted (even when they were willing to pay the then maximum premium)

As a support mod I personally answered tons of questions from real users about it and got a sense of their frustration. Those questions went away after the premium price increase was implemented: [EP5] [Executable] Set the temporary premium start price to $100,000

It’s the same with registration periods, “Help I just bought a name and it’s expired” is now a common question. If it wasn’t for the support tickets I receive from users falling prey to these abnormal practices of name traders I wouldn’t care much about this.

So yes, this affects real users.

Makoto’s recent dashboard reveals this as well, showing that the more names a wallet holds, the shorter their registration duration is.

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The goal EP5 was to fix the auction parameters to allow for a provably fairer auction. I don’t see a fairness violation here. I don’t really see how the concepts translate to this discussion.

A name can transfer owners at any point in its renewal period, so this problem is not solved by lengthening a registration period. UIs will need to improve.

Users can renew their name if it expires. I guess I’m not really understanding how that’s a specific concern. The name will be cheaper for them to buy if it is soon to expire, and then they have full control over registration period as well.

A user not seeing a piece of data which is stored on the blockchain because the UI doesn’t show it to them is not a problem that should be fixed at the smart contract level. There are many ENS UIs already that show expiration times. It’s a basic piece of information you would know when making a purchase, especially if the asset costs more than $1/day like a 3-letter name. We know this info when making every other subscription purchase online, so ENS isn’t different. I wouldn’t want to be locked into a one-year Netflix subscription because transfer ownership near expiration requires extending the subscription longer.

Also in your picture, the average registration period is 20 months in your metrics. I would really encourage drilling into the data much deeper to justify this. A 20 month average is not justification just because the trend matches market incentives (it costs money).

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I don’t really understand what the threat is here. Can you elaborate on why allowing short renewals is bad?

Fair enough in some way.

This is not hypothetical, but what my friends and I really feel.

In addition, some people have recently been registering domain names in large numbers and for short periods, but when the registration boom passes, there may be a large number of expired names, I think this is not what we want.

It’s not a threat, but it is counter-intuitive to users when they buy an ENS name which expires days after they do so. The users I’ve supported that has are unaware that it’s even possible to register for less than a year because the UI doesn’t make this apparent.

Likewise, it also isn’t a threat for someone to register for less than a year. My motivations for a minimum cap is the same for both practices.

But short duration renewals won’t make this more likely, will they? Domains can already be sold when they’re nearly expired.

To be clear, I’m supportive of increasing the min registration period; I just don’t see any harm in allowing renewals of any duration.

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Of course it does make it more likely to happen. While a user might occassionally buy an ENS name that’s close to the expiration date, the odds of it being within days of expiring isn’t as high with a minimum cap of 1 year on both registrations and renewals as it is when we allow name traders to habitually only renew for days at a time.

If you look at makoto’s recent dashboard you’ll see that trend reflected:

A secondary bonus of not allowing short renewals is that it’d likely lead to fewer ENS names hoarded, because the cost and risk of holding onto a large amount of names you’re not using becomes higher.

Renewing names for days at a time is definitely not cost-effective; they’d waste more on gas than they’d save on registration fees.

Do we have any evidence this is happening? Makoto’s dashboard shows shorter registrations, not renewals.

I’ve had several support tickets from name traders who bulk* renewed for so few days that their ENS names didn’t leave the grace period and were confused by it. Those tickets are logged in #ticket-logs if you want to go spelunking

I’m not overly worried about traders who get rekt by wasting their money - I don’ think we should disable a feature for that reason.

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Here are use cases for short-term registrations:

  • cheaper
  • income potential
  • gifting
  • viral memes
  • try-it-on/see-how-it-feels (I do this today with ENS)
  • burner wallets (still easier to use dapps if you grab a quick ENS name)
  • marketing campaigns
  • election campaigns (think: your local school board, not national-level)
  • social media campaign
  • D&D campaign
  • charity (short-term, action-oriented)
  • contest/sweepstakes
  • take advantage of a special offer or promotion
  • to support a cause or charity (essentially the ENS clubs we see, but with more purpose)
  • creative expression
  • celebration/anniversary

Most of these use cases can utilitise the SLD, there is no need to waste TLDs for such purpose as burner wallets. TLDs are limited resources. And using short-lived domains won’t exactly benefit projects such as “donations/charities” - risks the domain being acquired by scammers after expiry and exposing users to a now scam domain. There’s more upside for these use-cases to have a long-lived domain than a short-lived domain.

Bulk registration for 1 month and domains going to grace-period for 3 months on towards the premium stage of 21 days before finally expiring have been observed.

How many actual businesses could have used these domains as their abbreviated domain names? If not rectified, this will continue to happen, and can prevent acquisition of the domain by genuine would-be registrants in the future.

Looking at the prices of these domains, it’s evident that nobody is interested in buying the names in secondary markets. What did this achieve ultimately - It’s blocked (and will continue to block) others from acquiring the names.

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“Waste” is an opinion. Anyone can purchase and use a domain. ENS has significantly more use cases than just translating payment addresses. Anyone with your example concerns can register for longer if that’s worth it to them.

Another way to look at the data is that ENS has been deployed for 1,892 days, and these domains are off the market for 90 days + ~10-15 days of premium. So ~95% of the time they are available for register. The other 5% of the time anyone can make an offer and someone not using the domain is incentived to accept any nonzero offer above gas costs.

Again, I don’t see any actual real businesses affected here. It’s important to deal with tangible examples and not just theorycrafting.

100% of names will expire someday.

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100% of names will expire someday.

I think you might have missed the point that there is a huge possibility that those domains can and will be registered again for 1 month duration at a fraction of the cost most likely in bulk by scalpers right after the premium ends. A perpetual cycle. Although a genuine buyer could well indeed pay the premium instead - that could happen to 1 out of 10 domains but what will happen to the rest?

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If the premium expires, then that implies the market value of the premium is $0 and it has $0 resale value when it comes available to register.

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Out of all these, a year long registration is probably reasonable and appropriate for most of them. For example election campaigns and marketing campaigns etc, these sort of things all take time in the real world to prepare, so a purchaser of a domain for that purpose would likely register the domain a month or two in advance of the campaign push to make sure its secured, and then keep the domain for a few months after that whilst taking in funds etc and trying to keep their campaign in the public eye.

The only use cases in this list that actually have a negative impact from not being allowed to register less than a year, are flippers e.g viral memes, someone is only going to want to buy a domain for a month to flip it to someone else who is jumping on the excitement.

I dunno, i feel like even for people wanting to trade domains, they should be doing it in a way that shows conviction for the name they are registering, and that the name could actually be used by someone in the future.

I just don’t see making the minimum registration period less than a year actually harming anybody in a meaningful way, especially with such a low cost of entry ($5 for majority of use cases). And like others have mentioned, the use cases where there is genuine justification for a short period could be managed via subdomains, and are probably better suited to subdomains as well.

I look at the short registration <1year (min.: 0.1 year) as an option that if anything only benefits the DAO. Otherwise I think the benefit to good faith users outweighs any potential for abuse.

A.) the State of Delaware offers a service called a Name Reservation for people/businesses that are not ready to file legal documentation to create a legal entity for any number of valid reasons, and allows them to reserve the name for $75 for 120days. The Name Reservations can be extended for indefinitely by filing new Name Reservations during the 120day period and paying a new fee. At any point the holder of the Name Reservation can file the documentation to create the business emeritus and exercise the option to use the reserved name. This is concept is relevant to ENS because users/potential users are not limited to individuals, but businesses are considering building on ENS, and potential businesses are considering building in ENS. Short registration periods, like the Delaware Name Reservation, will benefit these users and help onboard those on the fence, it may even help people start a business on ENS that will change their lives.

B.) low income users can take advantage of the short registrations. Realistically 3-4 character domains are out of reach a substantial percentage of the World population. The short registration can be an opportunity for less affluent users to register these shorter ENS names. Just as one example someone may renew these short registrations paycheck to paycheck, whereas a full year registration fee upfront would be an economic impossibility. I recognize this is a dangerous prospect for people who can’t afford a full year registration out of pocket to take on this type of risk, but if a persons can manage it, build something on it, and flip it to change their life for them and their family, then I don’t see any greater good.

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