Hi All, I was trying to tell my friend who has some crypto to get this .eth name. However he found the app.ens.domains quite hard to register for his first name. He is already what I would term as a web2 technical user but coming from a CEX to own wallet to using his first Dapp, he didnt make it through the ENS registration process.
We had some early success but the conversion rate is not great. We got maybe 1 purchase per 100 visitors. These were from search ads so highly targeted users searching for ens domains.
The site is at buy.ensdom.com. Since then I have removed the marketing budget as I am focusing more on NameApes.com which is a ENS marketplace.
I am rethinking this idea as at crypto/web3 conference, I find .eth awareness really low. Like 5%? I am wondering if I should put more effort to make this a full app. Right now users have to go to app.ens.domain to check availability and it also doesn’t look like a web3 app.
What I am asking for is to share your experiences. Uf you had told friends etc who has a wallet but do not have an ens.
What stopped them from getting their ens? Was it the process or the cost? Or maybe they didn’t yet see the value of it?
Just want to hear some thoughts of how we can get more people into ens. Especially those who have wallets and starting to self custody their tokens.
They way I look at it–buying an ENS name with a credit card is like buying a book of stamps to just to put them on blank envelopes while expecting a fulfilling experience at the post office.
I also don’t know if the price is a factor. As of right now given the state of the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, if the cost of registration is too much money for a person, I would recommend that they should probably continue with traditional finance until they are ready for. alternative finance. Not financial advice, just a perspective.
Ironically and recently, in reference to onboarding new users to ENS-- has been something I have thought about. What I conclude-- the best way to bring users into ENS is :
-a use case for the person(s) being onboarded
-a natural organic decision by the person(s)
rather than giving them a product before the have a use case for it.
another issue here I think is “causality” - if you “buy” .eth name with credit card then you probably don’t know what it is and what to do with it, so that person needs to be familiar with ethereum ecosystem, and vice versa - if you are familiar with ethereum ecosystem, then you don’t need credit card to register .eth name
additionally I think it’s the question of specialisation, there are other institutions who are very efficient and much better in terms of doing “fiat on ramp”, like Coinbase, so for ENS to offer on ramp on top of current development map, seems like dilution of resources
finally I think it’s the question of “markets converging” - I think your value proposition is correct, but a bit ahead of your time. Clearly blockchain and fiat markets are converging, assets are becoming more correlated, they start to spill over to each other, and that process will continue. I’m thinking that at some point it would make sense to register .eth name with credit card, same way metamask now offers to buy ethereum with paypal.
They are moving their tokens off CEX into self custody and this marks their first step into actual wallet usage (sending crypto to others, using Dapps etc). If they do discover #ENS, is the current process too hard for them?
I don’t think credit card payment is the root problem. Maybe the initial scariness of the 2 step registration system, gas fees, contract approval, sending your first $ETH elsewhere.
It could be interesting to actually be able to register with DAI/USDC. The registrar can rid of the dependency on Chainlink ETH/USD exchange rates call and save gas although probably not that much to be honest. It might help a lot on renewal though - I would assume a lot of people renew in batch.
Excellent response! I have registered many ens domains and still not clear on use cases other than selling them?… I have tried to sell this idea to many people, but 9/10 I skeptical:(
I’m curious as to why you purchased digital identity if you don’t understand it’s use case? There is no publication or directive held by ENS that persuades, entices, convince or otherwise encourages you in any way to spend money on an ERC-721 Digital Identity token(s) for the purpose of buying and selling for profit. Not only that but the same applies to the idea of buying said goods to use as an incubator that influences selling a hypothetical use case to another entity based on speculating potential profit margins of that token.
How you choose to use the ownership of your registration period is solely your decision you made of your own free will.
ENS isn’t for selling ideas. Maybe that is where your skepticism came from. If not, maybe explain your skeptic.
I haven’t seen any compelling evidence of front running names. That would mean an adversarial entity would have to know about someone’s intent of registering a name. In that case, if said persons was aware of a name being registered then why would they not just register it. lol
Most people only really need one. I use mine to receive crypto mainly and manage my wallets (point subdomains to Hardware Wallets and development wallets), so far it’s been a huge convenience especially if you’re working on multiple workstations.
There are those who collect and resell names as you described.
The main use case is making crypto wallet addresses human readable.
For example, it is much easier for me to send NFTs or other assets to my cold wallet by typing in cold.daylon.eth instead of having to copy and paste the long 0x... address every time. It is much easier to tell someone I would like my payment sent to daylon.eth than send them my 0xcef... address and hope that they enter it correctly. It also makes it nearly impossible to accidentally send to the wrong address.
And it isn’t just for Ethereum assets! You can save other wallet addresses in your ENS record, and any service that resolves ENS names should be able to pull the correct wallet address.
Another use case is to have a “decentralized” website with your ENS name, often hosted on services such as IPFS and using gateways like .limo to resolve the content in legacy web browsers.
There are many new tools being developed all the time, such as ENS Redirect to make your .eth domain redirect to whatever web content you like.
But these days the bots would be minting all the random shit that is getting minted and nothing decent
I think the two step system is required to prevent front running. There is no way around it if you are on a system that uses gas which dictates priority. It would be a bad experience to a user even if they wanted Theth1935.eth and it go front run by a bad actor out to make the ENS a bad experience.
Anyway thats the way it is and unlikely it will change.
Let me phrase my question here since we got to a few post already
“Assuming a new Web3 user sent crypto a few times and suddenly saw ENS and understood it’s use case, is the onboarding easy enough?”
I have telegram names, solana names etc and speaking from experience,
Solana: Auction system totally turned me off. To wait 7 days and the possibility, someone could get my name was crazy.
Telegram name: There are names that I could buy outright or just mint (very web2). Totally easy and I didn’t need to understand BlockChain and gas fees.
Here is my list of things people need to understand to get their first ENS
Getting a Wallet
Understanding that they have a 0x address
Sending $ETH to that wallet (from CEX or Purchase via CC in App)
Understanding that ENS can is a shortener or consolidator of multiple addresses
That a wallet or address is used to login to an app
Gas Fees that changes
Two Step registration specific to ENS
Actually giving their ENS name away to someone or testing it themselves
I am still not sure what exact question I am asking, but I just thought to write down the User Journey so hopefully we can see where the drop off it.
I think we could use a guide like this incorporate into current current explainers
I don’t think I can say that I’ve seen them all, but I think most of them are focusing on registration process and some basic utility, and then some fantasies how cool everything is going to be in the future. I don’t think I’ve seen a guide which shows complete “roadmap” for the user.
This is a fascinating idea.
Two notable NFT collections on polygon (Reddit & a former president), and Starbucks and Instagram had a similar onboarding process for non-web3 native users. And millions of users were added to the web3 ecosystem because of these projects.
The creation of a wallet was done on the backend, without any effort from the user/purchaser.
A similar site for securing an ENS name, with a fiat purchase option, creating a wallet, and a “roadmap” that breakdowns all the use cases of ENS (SIWE, decentralized site, subdomains, etc) would be extremely helpful in pushing adoption both for current web3 users and normies.
Even an old-school web2-looking sales page might work quite well as a one-stop shop.
