The Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which powers the decentralized .eth domainspace, generated over $1 million in revenue from registration fees for three consecutive days.
One site which pools and aggregates daily fee data, and the seven-day average fees from decentralized apps and blockchains, is cryptofees.info. Today, the site had ENS as #4 on its list, higher than blockchains such as Avalanche and Bitcoin, and higher than DeFi protocols such as Aave, SpookySwap, and Compound.
At face, that accomplishment might not seem all that impressive. However, the fees which are accrued by blockchains, web3 projects, or protocols are often a strong indicator of usage. Besting the daily income of other blockchains and protocols, especially such important and upstanding ones, is something worthy of underscoring.
In short, it means that the Ethereum Name Service is having a moment. Earlier this week, the protocol’s 7-day average fees were sitting at $149,269. However, a number of things have sent ENS’s registration fees up and to the right. Among them are higher trading volume relating to demand for shorter .eth domains and speculation that Coinbase might be building a new “counterfactual wallet” system using ENS.
ENS has fetched some interest from media gurus, including our very own Litepaper newsletter, before this. When the ENS team announced its $ENS airdrop in November, many early adopters were welcomed to a five-figure payday from the protocol. However, since then, $ENS’s price movement has been extremely underwhelming: the crypto has crashed out of its former greatness, trading down more than -70%.
A controversy involving the team’s former Director of Operations, Brantly Millegan, didn’t do well to maintaining stability in the project or its price movement. Millegan was punted off of ENS’s adjacent development team, an organization called True Names Limited, after tweeting homophobic comments in February. His comments aroused complaint and selling from some of the Ethereum ecosystem’s most prominent players.
However, the Ethereum Name Service stands out as one of the most-valuable and most-utilized products in the Ethereum ecosystem. That is at least confirmed in-part by these rising registration fees, but also the roster of celebs and A-listers who have registered their own .eth domain. Among them are people like Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Waka Flocka, and others.