In my mind temperature is very low, ens is closer to gmail and telegram alias than to dns domain and you can’t compare the two directly like this, and as such 5USD is overpriced as it is, with this increase you are going to kill useable growth rate
10 Likes
The average renewal price for the following extensions are: .com - $12, .net - $13, .co - $25 so it only makes sense to increase 5+ character .eth domains to a similar price range. Right now, longer names are heavily discounted compared to web2 domains, but aligning them closer to $12–$25/year would keep ENS competitive, sustainable for the DAO, and still affordable for most users who want a simple, memorable name.
Where I truly disagree is with the 3- and 4-character prices. I’ve been thinking about this when I went to bed last night, and again this morning when I did some calculations. The current structure ($640/year for 3 character names and $160/year for 4 character names) is out of touch with reality when you look at what people actually earn after taxes. Here are the average annual NET (after-tax) incomes for three top (developed) countries:
USA - $50,000
Canada - $45,000 CAD ($32,730 USD)
UK - 25,000 EUR ($29,400 USD)
Here’s what $640 and $160 annual renewal fees represent as a percentage of the average after-tax (net) income:
USA:
$640 fee: 1.28% of net income
$160 fee: 0.32% of net income
Canada:
$640 fee: 1.96% of net income
$160 fee: 0.49% of net income
UK:
$640 fee: 2.18% of net income
$160 fee: 0.54% of net income
For the median earner in these countries, that $640 renewal is the equivalent of a meaningful chunk of disposable income. This is the main reason why most of the 3 character names are not being registered anymore. I think we’re at less (or close to?) 10% total registered. 4 character names are a bit higher but still no one wants to touch them at these prices.
I thought ENS was supposed to be a public good? A decentralized, open naming system that makes crypto wallets more human-readable and accessible to everyone, yet right now it’s pricing out the very people it was meant to serve.
Imagine someone from a less fortunate country than the three mentioned above. They simply can’t afford a good ENS even if they wanted one. Even from a top country, on a median income you’re pouring out between 1.28% to 2.18% of your yearly income into a domain that — let’s be honest here — right now only lets you name your wallet.
Recent Temp Check suggesting that users can mitigate costs by registering or renewing for 10+ years to receive up to a 40% discount, is not realistic for most people. The average individual does not have several thousand dollars readily available to commit upfront for domain renewals. Are we so out of touch with reality that we don’t even see this as an issue? Why is there a 53x (YES 53x) premium on 3 character ENS domains over a .com? We can do better. ENS should feel like a utility, not a luxury tax on the average user.
1 Like
I agree with the idea, but not with the timing.
Considering:
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In recent months, ENS has shown the lowest registration rates since 2021
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The analysis studies elasticity relative to gas price variations, but does it consider elasticity across multiple factors? Willingness to pay high gas fees in a FOMO-driven market is not the same as in a bearish market
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Market sentiment around ETH is bearish, which directly impacts ENS
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Inflation over the past 8 years is around 30%, yet the proposal suggests a 140% increase
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Mainstream users currently show little to no interest in registering ENS names. While it’s expected that most new users will come through free subnames, incentivizing .eth adoption still matters
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The ENS secondary market moves ~0.5 ETH daily
Therefore:
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Increasing registration prices will not attract new domainers—quite the opposite. The base analysis accounts for current domainers but not for the market it aims to bring in
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A 140% increase in portfolio costs for domainers will create new friction in the secondary market, which, as we know, is an efficient mechanism for attracting new participants
Conclusion:
An organization’s revenue depends on p × q. To increase it, they must either raise the price (as proposed here) or increase volume (in this case, registrations).
However, I strongly doubt that a large organization would choose to increase prices while its sales are stagnant or declining.
I believe introducing this change at this moment would be a significant mistake.
Of course, I may be wrong. I’m open to any feedback or comments on this.
8 Likes
There’s a real user benefit to longer registrations because it help prevent against accidental loss through expiration, which is one of the main complaints against ENS.
It also supports the fact that most users only buy a couple of identity based names that they hold on to for a long time. Users purchasing identity based names care about the longevity of their names, so offering them steep discounts encourages them to secure it for longer. If the goal is locking in capital then 50% would be much too high of a discount imo.
2 Likes
I was told the discussion is on the forum and not twitter so here I am for the first time in years to put my thoughts copy/pasted from my reply yesterday:
tbh it feels like they are now facing consequences of their actions and looking for ways to increase revenue from overspending vs anything else.
perhaps if they supported the one secondary market which had good footing in the past and promoted bulk registering names…
or maybe supported plenty of other skilled devs that worked on ENS projects who have now left and want nothing to do with the project after getting 0 support from labs even though their work was good enough to copy into the main app.. :shrug:
or maybe not wasting who knows how many x millions (or 100s thousands) on “name-chain” to only give up and go in a different direction completely by staying on L1..
or maybe .. not funding duplicate projects via service provider program which already existed but didn’t fit into what ever friend group they wanted to prop up.. or personal dislike for certain devs.
how many sub startups got funded..? how many projects that barely delivered anything actually useful.
why would ens pay/fund/grant a service such as enscribe to “name contracts” when its literally 1 function which exists in the contracts already? maybe should pay a dev-rel instead to actually talk about ens on here and post about such functionality and how to implement it instead of only at conferences once or twice a year or in scheduled calls.
registrations are DOWN more now than ever so the logic can not be that its “fair” when more names are available now then years ago.
4 Likes
To me, this sounds less like user protection and more like a strategy to drive short-term revenue.
Some months ago, there were discussions about reducing the grace period from 3 months to something shorter. That suggests the issue may not be accidental loss, but rather that people simply aren’t renewing. If that’s the case, it feels like ENS Labs has realised year-over-year that retention is weakening — and is now trying to compensate through pricing changes.
Framing it as “longer registrations = better user safety” makes sense on the surface, but the timing and structure feel designed to push people into front-running the price increase. That brings in immediate liquidity, rather than addressing the underlying issues around usability, adoption, or real demand.
If the goal was genuinely user protection, there are simpler and more direct ways to solve it — better renewal reminders, improved auto-renew UX, or even strengthening the grace period itself.
Pushing higher prices while offering discounts for locking capital long-term feels more like a financial lever than a user-first solution.
Also, we’re paying in ETH. Locking in for 5+ years isn’t just “$12 per year” — if ETH appreciates, the real cost over time becomes significantly higher. Users are effectively being asked to commit an asset that could be worth much more in the future, which makes these long-term lock-ins far less trivial than they’re being framed.
5 Likes
Thank you nick.eth for moving this forward, and credit to danch.quixote for the research. I have concerns.
The studies do not support the conclusions being drawn from them.
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danch.quixote’s study measured how users respond to temporary gas fluctuations, not permanent base price changes. Gas is volatile and users know it. A permanent 140% increase is a fundamentally different signal, and the study cannot tell us how users will respond to it.
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The claim that $12 felt “fair” and 82% registered longer has no public methodology. No sample size, no recruitment method, no description of what alternatives respondents were shown. There are decades of established research on survey methodology and pricing studies. Without seeing the methodology, delegates cannot evaluate the results.
The constitutional case has not been made.
- I agree with palmer.eth’s point. Article II says the primary purpose of fees is to prevent the namespace from being overwhelmed with speculative registrations, and the secondary purpose is to fund ongoing development. The proposal doesn’t demonstrate that $5 is failing at either purpose. It skips straight to “here’s the new price” without making the case that the current price needs to change.
The current 3L/4L pricing should not change.
- The current 3L/4L pricing structure is doing exactly what it was designed to do. High renewals mean these names circulate. Someone who can’t justify the cost lets the name expire, and someone with a real vision for it can pick it up. The namespace stays accessible because of the cost, not in spite of it. Short, marketable names remain available to anyone willing to build something meaningful with them.
Simplicity and trust matter.
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Simple pricing structures are easy to audit, easy to understand, and easy to trust. Complex ones create opacity, even when no one intends it. The more moving parts a pricing model has, the harder it becomes for ordinary users and delegates to verify that it’s working as promised.
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ENS pricing has been simple and stable for 8 years. Most users don’t follow governance forums or read pricing research. They know one thing: it costs $5 a year. That simplicity makes the decision to register easy, makes explaining ENS to a friend easy, and makes the cost predictable and trustworthy.
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A tiered discount curve that varies by duration and current expiry turns the price into a formula. Most users will never understand it. They will simply see that their name costs more, and some will not come back.
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Once you break 8 years of stable pricing with a 140% jump, users start wondering when the next increase is coming. That uncertainty is corrosive to trust, and you don’t get it back easily.
The discount curve is regressive.
- A user who can commit 10 years upfront pays an effective $6/year. A user who can only afford one year at a time pays $12. That’s a 2x penalty for having less capital. The framing of “$1/month feels fair” only holds if you assume every user has equal ability to choose the discounted path. They don’t. The people least able to pay are the ones who pay the most per year, and the people most able to pay are the ones who get the best deal. This is the opposite of how public infrastructure should work, and it sits uncomfortably with how ENS positions itself.
Networks are valued on number of users.
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Metcalfe’s Law: the value of a network scales superlinearly with connected users. Every successful network grew by keeping barriers low during expansion and only introduced pricing power once it was too embedded to leave. ENS is not at that stage.
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Registrations are at their lowest since 2021. More names are being released than registered. Active user percentages on mainnet are declining. These are not the vital signs of a network that can raise prices and expect users to absorb it.
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Regular users are the most valuable nodes in a network-effects model. Losing even a fraction of them costs more than the equivalent fraction of network value because you also lose word of mouth, social proof, and the integration pressure they create on wallets and apps.
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The DAO holds a large treasury of $ENS tokens whose value is downstream of network size. Trading user base for higher per-user revenue might improve registration income this year while destroying token value that dwarfs the incremental fees. That’s optimizing a line item while ignoring the balance sheet.
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At $12/year, ENS enters the same pricing territory as .com domains despite having a fraction of the infrastructure, browser support, and mainstream recognition. A network still fighting for adoption should not be pricing itself like an established standard.
I do not support this proposal. Current pricing should remain in place. If the DAO determines a revenue adjustment is eventually necessary, tie it to CPI and let it escalate annually so we never have to do this again, and so we don’t introduce complexity that most users will never understand.
11 Likes
I’m in favor of a price increase, but I don’t think the launch of ENSv2 is the right timing.
A number of timing concerns are noted in messages from others above. Here’s another one to consider: What do we want the narrative for the launch of ENSv2 to be?
Here, I think it will be better to deliver a narrative that’s completely positive: everything about ENSv2 is better and pure upside for everyone! 
With this purely positive narrative, the launch of ENSv2 is best positioned to deliver the new growth and network effects that ENS needs.
With an eye on DAO revenues and also as another exciting mechanism to promote the launch of ENSv2, I’d suggest we look to design an auction mechanism for 1 and 2 character names to be available for open registration for the first time ever.
The auction mechanism needs careful thought. A quick brainstorm would be an exponential price decay upon release, similar to when a name is released in ENSv1, followed by “base” pricing that might be set to something pretty meaningful. Ex: $10,000 / year for a 2-character name and $100,000 / year for a 1-character name.
I believe there’s a market for such pricing.
This could contribute to the excitement and purely-positive narratives for ENSv2 while also delivering a healthy boost to ENS DAO revenues that make all the work happening on ENS possible.
I’m also in favor of a thoughtful proposal that would reduce the cost of short names with non-Latin characters (ex: Chinese, Arabic, etc..). A lot of “inventory” there is held back by pricing that’s based around the logic of Latin characters. An update here for ENSv2 would also a great supporting ENSv2 launch narrative.
Let’s get big excitement building for ENSv2!
6 Likes
Supportive.
Over the last 8 years, almost everything around us has ridiculously gone up in price. From basic groceries to gold and real estate, while .eth registrations stayed at $5 the entire time. That’s an anomaly. I’ve said it before in conversations with others, and it never quite made sense.
Especially when you compare what you actually get with a .eth domain/name/identity today versus a traditional domain. The gap in utility is massive, yet pricing never reflected that.
Last year, I wrote about ENS becoming the only blockchain-first TLD to break into the top 30 globally, with ~2M registrations. I just checked again, and it’s now just below the top 50. And the protocol kept evolving.
From simple domains to a foundational identity layer for humans, contracts, organizations, and increasingly, AI agents. And still remains the most widely adopted resolution service, translating hex addresses to human-readable names, and the only decentralized, censorship-resistant way to plug into the wider internet, and is the only web3 protocol that extends traditional DNS namespaces to web3.
This price adjustment was overdue.
One personal take though: I recently secured cap.eth. I’ve wanted that name for over 3 years. People have been calling me ‘cap’ for 3+ years (despite my feelings towards it). I’ve been in ENS DAO as a member and SP for 3 years. So yeah… there’s probably no one happier to own this name than me. And when I had to renew it recently, paying $640 made me feel a gentle stab in my stomach. I’ll keep paying for it, but I’m not sure others would be willing to. This explains why the previous owner sold it to me for 0.5 ETH less than he had paid for it (no buyers).
2 Likes
There is no way - and I mean this literally - to make 3- and 4- character names affordable for “the average person”. There are only 17,576 3-character alphabetical names, and only 456,976 4-character alphabetical names. Meanwhile there are nearly half a billion people in the three countries you listed. If prices were low enough to be affordable to anyone who wants one, they would all be bought up and resold on the secondary market - at whatever price the market bears, which would still not be affordable. The inherent scarcity of these names is what warrants pricing them far above the price for longer names.
We are working on a better reminder system as well. Lengthening the grace period will not prevent people from forgetting to renew their names. The grace period is going away in ENSv2.
Fortunately money is fungible - if you need $12 in ETH, you can buy it at the time. However, ENSv2 will accept registration fees in stablecoins.
The fluctuation of gas prices strenthens Danch’s conclusions, rather than weakening them. If someone is prepared to pay the equivalent of $12/year for a name, even knowing that the price might be down to $6/year tomorrow, that strongly supports the hypothesis that the name is underpriced.
Just to clarify - 3L and 4L names are staying the same price for short registrations, and getting a substantial discount for long registrations. Can you expand on why you’re opposed to this?
My understanding from your reply is that ENS is prioritizing revenue and filtering by capital over accessibility and real adoption.
2 Likes
I support the proposed price increase for 5+ character names.
My only suggestion is that the multi-year discount curve should be shorter. Discounts should apply to any full-year registration, and the maximum 50% discount should be reached at 3 years rather than 10.
That would make the new pricing easier to accept while still rewarding long-term commitment.
1 Like
In my mind there is one gigantic problem here, which I keep talking about for years now and nobody’s listening, maybe smths wrong with me though
The problem is that there is no holistic approach to this
All what this thread is saying is this - “Look this seems kinda cheap, why don’t we raise the price?”
What you should be saying is something like this:
We considered the following factors
- Historical income and expenses
- Projected income and expenses
- Capital which is sitting idle at treasury
- As part of this equation YES - we also considered demand elasticity - DANCH research
- We considered market trends and did comparative analysis with similar products
- We conducted competitive landscape research, that is what are our direct competitors are charging for similar service (btw I would argue that very direct competition now is gmail - your email on gmail is pretty much your online identity right now - every single startup out there is sitting on Gsuite googlemeeting everyone with Google Calendar and tons of services attached to this, and they are charging zero, at least in direct monetary terms which what consumer really cares about)
- We developed solid strategy which looks at 3-5-7 years into the future and tells our roughly how we are going to build this machine and our strategy in terms of growth is XYZ, for example we want to aggressively gain market share by lowering the price of product beyond the cost, or we want to raise the price because there is so much demand for our product that we can comfortably raise the price and get more capital to finance future growth
Then you blend everything into smooth mix and get a number out of it.
I’ve spoken with Danch personally and he does command respect in my eyes, the guy is solid and I’m sure that he worked really hard on that research, even if we take his research as absolute axiom - that this analytical point is covered perfectly, there are so many more analytical points which needs to be covered to address the question of price. You just cannot underestimate the importance of this number, in my mind wrong move here can literary kill the protocol.
3 Likes
As a long-time supporter of ENS and a silent user, I feel I have every reason to register an account and speak up here. I don’t want to see ENS move in the wrong direction and eventually die out.
There is a few points I want to bring up:
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Raising ENS prices at this point in time is a bad idea and the wrong strategy. This strategy is extremely short-sighted. A more longer-term perspective should be taken.
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This move will seriously damage long-term users’ trust in ENS, and even more so, it will undermine users’ confidence in ENS.
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Most ordinary users do not know or care about the respective roles and differences between ENS Labs and the ENS DAO. What they care about is whether ENS is reliably trustworthy in the long run without having to think about it.
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The L2 development was already a strategic mistake, but correcting course in time did not cause significant damage. Now however, changing ENS pricing is fundamentally different. It is the wrong direction altogether and a decision that will ultimately undermine the very foundation of ENS.
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ENS is a groundbreaking product with world-class technology, but its marketing is very poor. It has done almost nothing in marketing and promotion. After years of effort, user growth has not expanded on a large scale; instead, users have continued to decline. Despite partnerships with giants such as PayPal and GoDaddy, user growth has still not increased significantly. Clearly, the marketing team has either not recognized the root of the problem, or even if they have, they are unable to solve it.
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The argument that raising ENS prices is meant to deter speculators is clearly untenable. Raising prices will also hurt ENS adoption and new user growth, and it will also punish ENS’s long-term supporters of many years.
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Regarding the discount issue, increasing the price of 5L to $12 and then offering a discount is a bad strategy. It is similar to fake discounts on e-commerce websites. This is clearly a trap and a seemingly good but actually bad idea. The purpose of this strategy is to increase users’ sunk costs and bind them to the platform, but it will also increase users’ burden and create a negative impression. Keeping 3L and 4L prices unchanged, while offering substantial discounts for multi-year registrations, is feasible. 5L should remain at $5, or 5L could remain at $5 while also allowing multi-year registrations to enjoy the same discounts.
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As an internet protocol and product, ENS should be about giving users more benefits, not arbitrarily raising prices and increasing users’ burden. $5 has already been a long-standing, reliable, and trusted psychological anchor price. Raising it arbitrarily is more harmful than beneficial for ENS and ENS users alike, and it is a lose-lose outcome.
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As ENS’s technology becomes increasingly mature, its focus and resources should tilt more toward marketing and promotion. For a groundbreaking product, ENS’s current marketing team clearly lacks sufficient awareness and capability in marketing, and does not recognize the root of the problem. As a product that has been developing for nine years, its technology is first-rate, but its user growth is mediocre.
ENS should do more for marketing and large-scale user growth, rather than raising prices and increasing user burden. Do not try to extract more from existing users. Raising prices is nothing less than killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Increasing the burden on users will also cause a large number of supporters and active users, including many silent users, to leave and abandon ENS. Do not let ENS lose its first-mover advantage and momentum.
If half of the people on Earth use the internet, then for 4 billion people, 3L and 4L are undoubtedly scarce, and even 5L is scarce; let alone for a global population of 8 billion. But these are all assumptions. Without real, large-scale user growth, all of this is just empty talk, all of it is just a beautiful but false assumption.
For example, I have 100 goose eggs, and they’ve long been selling for $5 each. But then I start thinking that there are 8 billion people in the world, so they must all be potential buyers. At that point, $5 suddenly seems way too cheap, and I start feeling like anything under $10,000 an egg is a bad deal. The problem is, this is happening while the number of people actually buying eggs is going down. In reality, this idea that they were sold too cheaply is based on a false assumption. It is not true, and it is harmful.
If some key strategies and policies are built on false assumptions, the result will be catastrophic.
Reliable, trustworthy, simple, and easy to use are ENS’s core.
A forward-looking strategy is what will allow ENS to go further.
The ENS mechanism is working. Instead of changing prices, ENS should focus on more strategic, effective marketing and on driving sustainable user growth.
10 Likes
Thanks for engaging on this, it’s an important discussion.
The gas sensitivity research was excellent work and really well presented, but of course you are limited in any study by the data available to work with. Users may have been reacting to a short-term friction they expected to pass. That is a different signal than tolerance for a permanent base price increase. Gas and registration fees are different commitments. Gas is a one-time or occasional transaction cost, and it may be anticipated to be negligible in the future. The base registration fee is a recurring annual obligation, every year, potentially forever. Sensitivity to gas cost does not perfectly extrapolate. They are different components of the investment.
It is also worth noting that the research itself identifies regular users, those registering 1 to 3 names with no commercial interest, as the most important group for ENS scalability and word of mouth. The same research identifies this group as the most vulnerable to price increases. These two findings together should give us pause. The users ENS most needs for growth are the ones most likely to be lost.
On 3L and 4L pricing. The same principles I outlined for 5L+, clarity, simplicity, consistency, trust, and avoiding a regressive effect, apply here, and they matter. Stable pricing also instills confidence in builders and investors that the cost structure they are building on top of will remain predictable going forward. That confidence is important for the kind of long term commitment ENS needs from its most valuable participants. There are also benefits to the current 3L and 4L price structure specifically.
I support the current base price for 3L and 4L names and I do not support introducing multi-year discounts for them. I hold this position less strongly than the others, but I think it’s worth making the full argument. The steep annual renewal is doing something valuable: it incentivizes these names to be used by builders, not held as individual identity domains. Right now, there is a clear pricing difference between premium 3 and 4 character names and longer names on the secondary market, and it is because of the high renewal costs of 3 and 4 character names. For short domains, a builder with a real vision can get in the door at a reasonable entry price and, if they build something useful, easily absorb the renewal because the project they build sustains it.
An ENS name is not just a domain. It is a potential namespace. The holder can issue subnames, run a registry, build an entire ecosystem underneath it. That is closer in function to operating a TLD than to owning a single domain, and it means a single name can generate disproportionate value for ENS, which supports the exponential increase in renewal costs as names shorten. Consider what Basenames, Uni Names, and Linea have meant for ENS. These projects matter enormously because of the reach they bring. And those are relatively straightforward name registries. We have not yet begun to see the more creative uses of ENS that are still possible, things users and builders are still learning about and exploring. We should keep the door open for someone to build something great without the kind of friction there is in web2. When these things are built, on the trust of standard, consistent pricing and the strong brand of ENS, they will bring far more value to ENS than any discount for users of a short name to be used as identity, even with long term commitment.
It has been pointed out that relatively few 3L names are currently registered. That is the system working. The namespace is open and available. A builder can walk in today and find an excellent short name. If we lower the holding cost through multi-year discounts and those names end up parked in speculator wallets, that opportunity lessens. If we introduce multi-year discounts, it lowers the long tail holding cost for these names and the aftermarket entry price will rise. It will have effectively made short names harder to obtain, not easier. The current pricing does exactly what it should: it keeps short names somewhat obtainable for the people willing to build on them.
I am not opposed to differentiated pricing for names using emoji, non-ASCII, or other nonstandard character sets. The supply dynamics and demand profiles for those names are different from standard alphanumeric names, and pricing that reflects that could be reasonable.
1 Like
I’m not convinced by this “user research,” especially the claim that users overwhelmingly perceive $12 per year as a fair or intuitive price point. What exactly is this based on?
What type of research was conducted here? Was it surveys, interviews, or behavioral data analysis? Where is the actual dataset? How were users sampled? If the sample itself is biased, then a claim of “overwhelming consensus” doesn’t really hold up.
In any normal consumer context, price increases like this are not something people naturally welcome. If supermarket egg prices or oil prices go up, no one welcomes that increase or sees it as inherently fair. It’s simply perceived as higher cost which people either push back or switch to alternative options, rather than reframing it as better value alignment.
That’s why this framing feels disconnected from reality. It assumes a kind of abstract willingness among users to accept price increases, which doesn’t match real-world consumer behavior. And this is not a luxury or premium consumer product where higher pricing is used to create exclusivity or intentionally restrict access.
If ENS is being positioned more like a public good or infrastructure layer rather than a premium product, then the assumption that users will “overwhelmingly accept” a price increase becomes even harder to justify.
So, is ENS now positioning itself as a public good or a premium consumer product?
So the core issue is not just the price point itself, but whether the methodology and data behind this conclusion are actually sound.
7 Likes
Hi guys!
I’m happy to answer questions related to the econometric justification for these changes (I wrote the initial study) – that is, anything related to user price sensitivity and discounting. So you can address such questions to me.
The price had been the same for eight years, so extrapolating the gas price response to changes in the base price was the only way to statistically estimate the possibility of price change. I took steps to eliminate some of the biases this method could introduce.
For example, like you, I thought, “gas is volatile and users know it.” If this were true, then users should postpone registrations when gas prices are high, because they know it will be cheaper at some point. We would see spikes in registrations when gas prices drop sharply. Perhaps these spikes would even be stronger the longer gas prices were high before they dropped.
I tested this and found that such an effect doesn’t exist. The formula is as follows:
- Gas is stable within +/- 10% → registrations rise by 15% of the average
- Gas rises → registrations fall by 15%
- Gas falls → registrations fall by 10%
So, you could say the opposite effect is observed. Here are the specifics. I added this factor to the model, and it influenced the final coefficients and, consequently, my final assessment.
Even despite this, of course, the extrapolation cannot be 100% accurate, as there are emotional factors, which Labs studied.
The price curve always existed because there was gas. Gas kinda simulated a discount, lowering the average price per year as the registration duration increased. Users responded to this and opted for longer registrations when gas was high, demonstrating quite rational economic behavior.
Now gas is at all-time low values, and as my research predicted, registration duration has also dropped to all-time low values as a result. Discounts are necessary if we want to see long registrations/renewals and fewer releases. In the “nearly-gasless mainnet” particulary.
During the previous discussion, I became interested and broke down the price sensitivity data for different alphabets. Unfortunately I didn’t complete this, but based on preliminary results, I can confirm that the price barrier differs for non-Latin alphabets. Perhaps this topic should be explored in more detail for future iterations of the pricing policy discussion.
As a delegate, I support the price change and the starting price of $12. However, I still support splitting the 5L+ into 5-7L and 8L+, as well as using more curved curves, as suggested in the study. I hope we will arrive at an ideal model within the framework of this temp check.
2 Likes
Then why is ENS Labs making the decision to remove the GRACE PERIOD for .eth domains with the release of ENSv2 if your goal is for people to maximize retaining their .eth domain as end users?
Doesn’t that seem contradictive? It seems that you guys just want that so you can short-cut getting revenue quicker.
What it seems like to me, is that you are fronting this proposal as a way for people to retain names longer, but the real reason is you want more revenue meanwhile making it easier for people to have an accidental loss of their .eth name.
If you want people to secure it for longer, then why dont we just use this model, without increasing renewal costs? 
I would imagine that the “evidence shows that speculators overwhelmingly register for short periods” is primarily for 3-4 character .eth names. Not 5+ character, enough to make a noticeable difference. Could you provide the data for us to publicly see? Citing unverifiable data as a source is counterintuitive in web3, when that’s ultimately why we are here… Transparency.
Also, “ longer expiration dates do not translate to higher sales prices on the secondary markets” goes against your prior logic on X posts saying “What would you pay for on secondary - a name that costs $5/year, or the same name that costs $640/year? Carrying costs decrease the value of names, which make them less attractive as a speculative asset.”
This logic, means that on average, people on the secondary market would pay more for a 5+ name that has a 5 year registration which INCREASES the time they have AVAILABLE to sell it, versus a 3-character with only 1 month registration left on it.
Having longer registrations/expirations inherently have a much higher chance of being sold with “a higher sales price on the secondary market” backed be the logic you have expressed. Most people that buy 3-4 character .eth domains make less on secondary markets, per your original and ongoing design.
I hope you take into deep consideration that reminders via email is a huge threat.
This precedent makes it easy for people to get spoofed/phished.
Bad actors can see the expiration date can send out mass emails it an attempt to phish people.
Please, reconsider this approach moving forward.
I am of the same opinion, instead of decreasing the price of .eth domains which would increase adoption, Nick wants to increase the registration cost which will decrease adoption. This TEMP CHECK has not provided any PUBLICLY AVAILABLE data that supports or warrents a price increase.
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This is an interesting discussion, and I think it’s worth flagging a tension with another open thread.
In the Subsidy Contract RFC, there is support for routing ~10% of registration fees back to users as subsidised transactions
We can’t coherently pursue both directions at once. Raising the 5+ char baseline by 140% while simultaneously building infrastructure to return 10% of fees to users is, at best, performative
A 10% subsidy on registration fees paired with a gross increase feels performative with a lot of extra development work attached for no material gain.
If the DAO is serious about a fee increase, it should consider baking a subsidy directly into the pricing adjustment rather than running two separate workstreams that partially cancel each other out.
Alternatively, if we believe subsidies are the right tool for accessibility and adoption, then perhaps the price increase should be more modest, and the subsidy contract should be the primary mechanism for balancing revenue needs against user experience.
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Demand and changes in demand expectations are what fundamentally affect ENS registration volume.
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There is no necessary causal link between gas fee fluctuations and ENS registration volume. The conclusion drawn from studies of the “gas fee fluctuation model” only captures the surface level. What fundamentally affects ENS registration volume is market demand and demand expectations.
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Gas fee is a “transaction-layer friction,” not a “demand driver.” Gas fee does not create or determine demand; it only adds one layer of friction cost that affects whether users actually execute a registration decision on top of existing demand and demand expectations.
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Gas affects execution timing, while base price affects the purchase decision itself.
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Gas affects “when to buy,” price affects “whether to buy”, and demand determines “whether anyone wants to buy” in the first place.
In summary:
Gas fee does not create demand; it only introduces friction at the execution level.
Demand and demand expectations determine whether users initially want an ENS name, while the base price determines whether that intention still holds under economic evaluation. Gas only affects the timing and probability of completion.
Treating gas as a proxy variable for base price is, at its core, a fundamental modeling error: it assumes that two economically distinct variables can be mapped into the same behavioral response function. This is not a minor modeling choice; it is a wrong model specification.
Gas is a short-term, mean-reverting transaction cost that only makes small adjustments at the execution margin, while base price is a structural, persistent value signal that directly changes willingness to pay and therefore shifts the decision boundary itself.
From an econometric perspective, this is not just a simple proxy-variable problem; it is a structural identification failure. The model is effectively using short-term execution noise to infer long-term price elasticity, and that approach creates systematic bias because the source of variation and the target behavioral dimension do not match.
This is not a matter of “simplifying the model”; it is a mis-specification of the behavioral mechanism.
In plain behavioral terms: gas determines “when to act”, while base price determines “whether to act”. These two margins are not interchangeable, and mixing them up directly destroys the validity of the inference.
In simple terms:
Treating gas as a substitute for base price implicitly assumes that the two affect user behavior in the same way, but that premise is wrong. Gas is a short-term, reversible transaction cost, while base price is a persistent value signal that directly reshapes the user’s judgment of whether something is “worth it.”
In other words, gas only helps users choose the right time, whereas a higher base price may cause the decision to disappear altogether.
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