Just as ETH acts as gas to secure transactions on Ethereum, ENS tokens serve as the gas safeguarding the domain naming service — an annual domain registration fee equivalent to 5 USDT.
Much like how Ethereum distributes its revenue back to protocol contributors (stakers), ENS revenue ought to flow to its own contributors, including developers, promoters, and governance voters.
Integrating ENS tokens into core protocol functions does more than streamline incentive structures and fuel ENS’s sustainable growth. It also marks a pioneering model that seamlessly merges non-profit protocol development with market-driven investment in human history. This breakthrough will greatly advance innovations in market mechanisms, comparable to the historic invention of the joint-stock company.
1 Like
If you’re worried that taking $ENS tokens as revenue would make the protocol’s earnings swing wildly,we can first look for some ways to boost income.
To raise income for the ENS project,the best solution is to roll out privacy features,since the users want this more than anything else.
Worth updating the starting number before the mechanism gets debated: the annual fee is not 5 USD equivalent anymore. ENS v2 pricing set 5+ character names at 8 dollars per year with multi-year discounts stepping down to 7 dollars at two years and 5.50 at three, passed in April 2026 after the pricing policy research had recommended 15 with a curved discount and ENS Labs refined it downward against user research. That number is the product of a long tuning cycle, and it is the thing a denomination change would put back in play.
The gas analogy is where the proposal is weakest. Gas floats because it is a per transaction cost a user accepts at the moment of paying it. A name renewal is an annual subscription, and for a subscription predictability is the product, so a fee denominated in ENS makes renewals most expensive in exactly the drawdowns where holders are least willing to pay.
Three paths, and the proposal is really two decisions that should not travel together. Keep USD denomination and add ENS as an optional payment route with a fixed discount, which creates a genuine sink without touching the price a user sees, at the cost of an oracle and one more parameter to maintain, and this was already floated in the New Pricing Policy research thread rather than being new ground. Denominate the fee in ENS outright, which is the strongest sink and also hands renewal cost to token volatility and reopens the 8 dollar decision. Leave pricing untouched and treat contributor funding as a treasury allocation question, which adds no demand but also adds no new failure surface.
The first path is the only one that creates token demand without relitigating a price the DAO just spent a year landing, and the revenue distribution half belongs in its own thread with its own analysis.
1 Like
Thanks a lot for your feedback.MY idea comes from how $LINK works within the Chainlink ecosystem,in my opinion,both ENS and Chainlink are public goods that serve as Web3 infrastructure,and both have to adopt fee models to resolve the “free-rider problem”.Chainlink runs smoothly with its current approach,and it has built a successful closed loop for incentive design and sustainable operation.
The above views are for your reference,Expanding the utility of the $ENS token won’t hurt the ENS protocol as a public good at all,ENS can and ought to become an outstanding public good used by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis.Thanks again.