@jellaboudy Wanted to say a couple things. Glad you came to share first all. I understand how a trademarked identity being held by squatters is frustrating. I did want to speak to this part though:
There was a lot done in the design of the ENS protocol to dissuade at least some of this.
- Registration is a 3 step process - If it were 1 transaction, the name could be broadcast as it were being registered and miners/bots could frontrun paying higher gas and snatch a name as it were being registered.
- Registration fees help prohibit massive squatting(way more than would be happening right now), yet $5 is cheap enough to allow many to register. Along these lines, having 3 ($640/yr) and 4 ($160/yr) length names costs higher has dissuaded some amount of squatting on sought after names.
- Expired names go into a premium after grace period. If this didn’t happen, squatters would no doubt be registering names for $5/yr + gas immediately of any names that expired. Instead, they start at $2000 and go down. I think this was a pretty smart design.
- I’ve heard in many ENS community calls, twitter spaces, etc… that squatting is looked down upon because it hinders adoption. This has been put into the airwaves by ENS core many times.
- Finally, I know of many in the ENS community that have registered names for artists, influencers, organizations, and even businesses (ie nba.eth) and have given to those entities their ENS name free of charge. Props to ENS fairies!
So I think what could be done to minimize squatting from a protocol design aspect has been done, but without compromising the decentralized nature of the protocol. Having the ability for a central authority to remove ENS names kind of goes against this.
So again just wanted to say I empathize with your frustrations. Glad you came to share.