Using $ENS token as a payment option for ENS domain registration and renewal fees alongside $ETH

🌱 ENS Ecosystem Ecosystem Discussion
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Author - Zangoti

When the majority are ready to invest in any project, one of the first questions they would ask “Does this token have a use case? or is this a utility token?”. As Katharine Wooller puts it, “Any cryptocurrency is only as good as its use case,” who is the managing director at crypto platform Dacxi.

ENS is a DAO and a governance token with important use cases such as filing and voting on proposals. However, this use case is only limited to a small percentage of ENS holders. Most ENS holders are not delegators, and most own ENS domains, which require constant renewal over time.

We would like to propose a “wider” use case that covers most ENS holders by using $ENS token as a payment option for ENS domain registration and renewal fees alongside $ETH.

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I see two problems with this:

  1. Removing voting power from the “market”. Any purchase in $ENS will move this ENS to the treasury and increase (proportional) voting power of the holders. In the long run, this may become an issue.
  2. How will we define the price of a domain in both $ENS and ETH? This will complicate things, probably requiring an oracle (or more), etc.

After all, if you want to use ENS to buy a domain, you can always change if for ETH.

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the current price is $5/year, payable with ETH at the current exchange rate (the same could be said for ENS)

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You are right, I had in mind that the price is in ETH.

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If we explored non-ETH payment options, I wonder if it would be worth expanding it beyond just $ENS to accepting stables and such too?

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This has been a hot topic lately, but I will say again. $ENS is not a currency.

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I think we want to avoid inectivising people to discard their ENS tokens. So perhaps a staking mechanism that provided a discount on registrations would be a better option. As discussed previously this discount could be based on participation in the DAO.

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The primary purpose of the registration fee is to prevent people from squatting on names. Whether they hold $ENS token or not are unrelated to the intent of the purchase so I don’t think we should do so without changing our constitution #2 ENS DAO Constitution - ENS Documentation

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Yes fair point, although one way around this would be to make sure the discount is much less than the value of the staked ENS

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but it does have a price, doesn’t it?
and, it seems to me, one can buy $ENS, and one can sell $ENS…

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It has an exchange rate. Literally anything does, which is called bartering.

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So, the fact it has a price, an exchange rate, means that can be traded.

If it can be traded, it can be used a a currency IF both parties agrees (even if you, a third party, doesn’t agree)

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Yes, of course it can be used as a currency, or more specifically the “medium of exchange” part of a currency. My point is that it is not the intended purpose of ENS to be used as a currency, and it’s really fundamental to the constitution that it’s not.

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The same suggestion came up at ENS Registration Fees . Paying with other currency came up multiple times but never became a high priority enough to implement given people can simply use dex to buy ETH (and most people have ETH to pay gas fee). To make this suggestion high enough to work on, I would like to see any data supporting the benefit.

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Having to sell $ENS (if you don’t have enough $ETH) to pay the ENS fee, seems very odd to me…

(not saying is bad or good, just seems strange)

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Especially strange for someone who bought their $ENS with $ETH.

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I don’t think “feels strange” is a strong enough indicator to put dev resources and make the change.

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Fair enough, we are throwing ideas, bear with us…

$5 worth of ETH and $5 worth of staked $ENS to renew a domain

(of course, the staked $ENS can be used for voting power)

because squatters and utility…
and also, skin in the game, the more you renew the domain, the more staked $ENS is in that domain, the more responsibility you have… :slight_smile:

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Now it’s even worse than just paying with $ENS in terms of usability. Why would you overcomplicate for no clear benefit?

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the usability can be resolved…

for the normie, the cost of renewing a domain is $10 (of which $5 are recoverable)

all you need is ETH
(the system convert the required ETH in 5 dollars worth and 5 ENS worth)

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