Status update:
ENS Holiday Awards has successfully closed as of the end of December 31, 2025 UTC. A full log of all referrals made during the program as captured by ENSNode can be found here.
Key metrics from this initial pilot of an ENS Referral Program include:
- 34 distinct referrers.
- 10,189 referred registrations and renewals.
- 4,199 total years of incremental duration of referred registrations and renewals.
$82,386.71 total revenue generated for the ENS DAO through referred registrations and renewals.
- $64,706.40 “base cost” revenue, including additional fees for short 3 and 4 character names.
- $17,680.31 “premium” revenue from recently released names.
Notes on these revenue metrics:
- Technically, all revenue is captured in ETH, not USD.
- The above revenue metrics are calculated using the “current” rate of $2,985.57 USD per ETH.
- ENS DAO accounting practices are understood to not recognize revenue until it is “earned” across the lifecycle of a registration, whereas above we simplify to immediately recognize all revenue captured through referrals across the month of Dec 2025 according to the referenced exchange rate.
The key highlight of this pilot was all the infrastructure being shipped to support future ENS Referral Program cycles, including:
- Indexing support in ENSNode for all ENS referral transactions.
- APIs and UIs to build and display ENS referral leaderboards out of a complex rule set.
- APIs and UIs to build and display ENS referral live feeds.
- APIs and UIs to display detailed referral logs for each referrer.
- Support for a “referrer” param to be passed to the official ENS Manager App (thanks ENS Labs team!) to broaden access to participating in the referral program.
- An ENS Referral Link generator.
- Packages (#1 and #2) containing utilities for the ENS Ecosystem to build on the ENS Referral Program.
- A new smart contract to ensure all renewal referrals are correctly applied.
- A number of apps that are actively investing in growing the ENS ecosystem have integrated with the ENS Referral Program, including Grails, Snipe Zone, ENS Tools, ENS Vision, DefiLlama, ENS Book, ENS Fairy, and ENS Watch. We hope to see these apps and many new apps receive significant funding through future iterations of the ENS Referral Program
What’s next? Our team will be working to:
- Distribute awards to all the referrers who qualified. Congratulations to all!
- Display a log of “Awards” for each ENS Advocate on the ENSAwards site. This will give full visibility on each of the award distributions.
- Refine rules to enhance the outcomes of the next ENS Referral Program incentive cycle.
- Launch the next ENS Referral Program incentive cycle as soon as possible!
How can you get involved?
We’re especially interested in community feedback! What did you like about the rules for the initial pilot? What didn’t you like? What are your suggestions for improvement for the next incentive cycle?
We already see a number of opportunities for refinement. Ideas we’ll be exploring in future incentive program cycles may include:
- Mitigating incentives for “self-referrals”.
- Constraining allowed referrer marketing strategies to prohibit direct or indirect discounts for .eth name registrations or renewals. This would aim to encourage referrers to focus on “growing the pie” rather than competing in a potential “race to the bottom”. We aim to see referrers build sustainable and profitable businesses through verifiable metrics of how they are helping ENS grow.
- Providing funding mechanisms for builders in the ENS Ecosystem who create important value for ENS but at layers outside of referrals.
What else would you like to see changed? Contact us and share your thoughts!