Fair enough. We’ll put it to a social vote. Text to come soon.
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This is now live: Snapshot
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If we are committed to biting the bullet to changing the price, I suggest we also change the Unit of Account to no longer be USD while keeping ETH as the Medium of Exchange.
ENS aims to be credibly neutral internet infrastructure for the world. As the world enters a multipolar phase, the most credibly neutral Units of Accounts are the IMF SDR and Gold. For example, we could change the unit of account to:
— 10 IMF SDR (~$13 USD)
— 0.10 grams of Gold (~$15 USD)
Of course allow registrations into the indefinite future the $5 USD price as long as the transaction is executed before the price increases.
This also presents the option to make the number feel less arbitrary than $12 USD. Numbers like 10 SDR or 0.1 grams of gold are a more natural Schelling Fence against further price increases than $12 USD.
As the SDR is a bit arcane, I personally slightly lean towards Gold over IMF SDR, but I think either would be just fine. IMF SDR is a bit more stable. But Gold is less inflationary. Either seems an improvement over $12 USD as the unit of account.
I understand if this is a bridge too far. But this is my first impression to a price increase to $12.
If we were to actually do this, the most obvious on-chain oracles are those for XAUT and Chainlink’s oracles for USD, EUR, CNY, JPY, GBP. And we just manually multiply them together in-code (would require rebalancing whenever the IMF changes the distribution).
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Thanks to @nick.eth and the ENS Labs team for the detailed write-up, and for revising the base price from $12 to $8 in response to community feedback. That responsiveness matters and shows the temp check process working as intended.
A few reasons we’re supportive:
On the $8 base price. ENS pricing has been static for a long time, through significant inflation and a very different gas environment. $8/year is still well below comparable DNS TLDs (.com, .net) and remains an accessible entry point for new users. The commitment to a biennial DAO pricing review is also a healthy addition, it ensures pricing stays a living conversation rather than a one-time decision.
On the multi-year discount. This is the strongest part of the proposal. Rewarding long-term commitment improves namespace stability, aligns incentives with genuine users over speculators, and the research showing 82% of users register longer when offered the discount is a meaningful signal. The shift to a simpler per-transaction model (vs incremental) is also the right call for user comprehension.
On funding and growth. ENSv2 is a substantial undertaking, and the additional revenue supports both the protocol itself and the broader ecosystem, including initiatives like the Referral Program that can drive integrations with the platforms ENS most needs to reach. We see this as ENS investing in its own distribution, not just collecting more from existing users.
A few notes for consideration going forward:
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We’d encourage ENS Labs and the DAO to monitor registration rates closely in the months following implementation, and to be willing to revisit pricing sooner than two years if data warrants it.
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The grace period reduction (90 → 28 days) has received less discussion than the pricing change but represents a meaningful UX shift. We’d appreciate clearer communication to users around expiry, and would support revisiting this if it leads to a material increase in accidental losses.
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We echo the calls in the thread for continued experimentation around differentiated pricing for non-ASCII names and longer-character tiers, which could meaningfully broaden global accessibility.
Overall, the revised proposal strikes a reasonable balance between sustainability and accessibility, and we appreciate the willingness to engage with community feedback in shaping it. Voting For.