The discussion seems like the temperature check failed.
Between the grace period getting nuked and the 140% (!) baseline increase “temp check“ that’s basically not a temp check at all… are you guys trying to lose users before reaching critical velocity?
In recent months, ENS has shown the lowest registration rates since 2021. The majority of extensions is coming from whales / squatters / people who believe in ENS long term and are speculating on the success of the space and ENS in general.
Barely any new users are coming into the crypto space → barely any new users are going to need an identity. The people carrying ENS are the degens that have already been in this space for a while. The people who already paid you a crapload of $$$ and still continue to. You have no valid reason for a price raise other than “idk it seems kinda low”, so you’re straight up trying to bump it by 140%? lol, lmao even
Registrations are down to it’s lowest in years and people are barely willing to spend $5, why would they spend $12/y and extend for 10 years a pop?
As people mentioned earlier, that also continues to price out a lot of people in developing countries. Aka the massive amount of underbanked users who depend on crypto, and who would benefit from ENS just as much as ENS would benefit from them.
We haven’t reached escape velocity nor is there a valid reason to raise prices - and you’re basically “temp check” notifying users that the extensions will more than double for no valid reason?
Increasing registration prices will NOT attract new domainers and will most likely discourage people from using multiple names. Or any names at all. Just save the addy in your wallets address book for no cost at all. This is what a lot of people from developing countries prefer over paying for ENS, and you would basically price them out further. I thought the 3-4L registrations are high so 5L can be low?
The handful of people in developing countries who actually use ENS will drop it after a 140% hike. Domain whales and squatters will also slim down the names they keep extending. Aka you will get less money. Maybe the math works out, losing X% users and X% of domain extensions is compensated by the 140% price hike 
But it’s extremely shortsighted, and let’s be honest, motivated by greed.
Let’s get painfully real for a moment. The price hike is most likely on your mind because the Namechain L2 development burned through a shitload of funds for no reason, before you ultimately decided that the ETHEREUM name service shall remain on Ethereum. Gotta drive short-term revenue to compensate for that useless burn, eh?
The Namechain development started, as said by ENS in tweets and blog articles, so you could drive the cost of registrations down (!) - mainly because of gas spikes. You wanted to keep ENS names affordable.
You mentioned that the median $5 gas (that wasn’t going into ENS pockets LOL) was so high that it warranted making a whole L2 to drive the cost down. You were prepared to build a whole L2 (and burn a crapload of money doing so) to keep extensions affordable. Because the additional $5 was too much to pay for your identity (!!!).
“This upgrade not only makes ENS more AFFORDABLE but also faster.”
Now that the mainnet gas went down: you stopped the Namechain development which started over a $5 gas increase on top of current registration prices. And now you want to drive the cost up by 7$ (+140%) - but now it’s okay because it’s going into your pockets instead of being spent on gas?
Make it make sense? What about the “affordability“ which allegedly contributed to why you wanted to build the Namechain in the first place? Where is the logic here? Other than, idk, “we need more money because of Namechain”?
The L2 development was already a strategic mistake, this price raise stemming from it is just making it worse. Even though you stopped the development, the price raise is the direct result of the Namechain burn. (Either that, or just straight up greed. Maybe both.)
ENS has two unique issues on both ends - short and long extensions have their own set of issues.
People forget to extend their names and the grace period is a massive lifesaver. Removing that is not going to enhance user retention. That v2 grace removal is imho. stupid. Bundle it with the price raise and your user retention plummets.
On the other hand, long extensions, especially incentivized by 50% discounts, have another set of issues.
I know many people specifically avoid extending for over a year, as they wouldn’t want to lose their identity for 10+ years in case they would get rekt.
I definitely wouldn’t extend my 3-4L for 10 years for exactly that reason, not even with a heavy discount incentive.
There’s a few names out there that I’m personally interested in, but they are either in wallets that were lost or the names were moved after someone got hacked. Those names are locked out for YEARS now, because the original owners extended them for a long time.
The whole “temp check” proposal screams of greed. Not only the price raise itself, but also the discount mechanism incentivizing multi-year payments upfront.
You’re thinking about short term revenue and trying to get those 10 years registration fees upfront and trying to bait people with discounts, rather than having the funds trickling over time.
Multi year discounts not only cater to people with more capital, but incentivizing 50% discounts on 10 years will sooner or later lead to a bunch of names being locked out for a decade because some people wanted to save on extension costs and then got rekt - losing their identity for a decade. Imagine another 2021-esque hype bubble - aka a time where people were making “my apes are gone” posts on a daily basis - but with their identity. “My identity is gone. For a decade.”
That’s why a lot of people don’t do long name extensions.
“More than half (52.5%) of wallet addresses with 5-9 names register for less than a year. Multi-year discounts shift the fee burden in aggregate away from the cohort that registers greater than a year.“
Incentivizing it because you want more money upfront is not the way.
Plenty of things have been said in this thread. But one thing hasn’t. You’re getting too greedy and it’s motivated by the whole L2 fiasco. And all you’re doing is just digging a deeper hole before ENS actually reached escape velocity.
“You cannot consider just the first-order consequences of a proposed action. You have to think about how people will change their behaviour in reaction to it.”
I believe that’s something that was said by nick.eth at some point.
