Writing stream of thoughts in one go, as usual.

Every now and then, I see people criticizing ENS. It’s usually the folks who bought some .eth names during the hype and are now holding on for dear life through these less-than-desirably bullish times, hoping one day those names will sell for millions.

The problem is, most of these critics are missing the point. They focus entirely on the product (.eth domains) and not the protocol that powers it all. Their frustration is about their investment, not about ENS itself. And that’s fine.

Could the ENS leadership have paid more attention to traders? Sure. Will they in the future? Probably not. ENS isn’t built to cater to speculators; it’s being built to last. It’s one of the largest and most successful DAOs in crypto, run by people who are nerds obsessed with bigger questions than “when will my .eth make me rich?”

We think about how to make every blockchain have native identity services using ENS as the foundation. How to solve universal resolution for ENS to work seamlessly across the ecosystem. How to make Namechain capture value and economic activity and build a flourishing ecosystem of apps. How to permissionlessly offer indexing of L1, L2, and offchain subnames. How to expand governance participation while reducing attack vectors. How to connect ENS to the 370M+ existing Web2 domains, all of which, one way or another, will resolve through ENS. How to preserve and grow capital at the same time. And maybe most importantly — how to ensure ENS and its DAO live uninterrupted for the next hundred years.

These are the questions that ensure ENS’s long-term relevance. They’re the reason ENS will remain an irreplaceable infrastructure layer of the new Internet, possibly of equal importance as the DNS is in a traditional world.

So yes — long-term thinking and building may not give you instant profits, but it’s what keeps you on TOP forever. And all of this work indirectly strengthens the value of your .eth domains in ways that actually matter.

ENS is the most widely adopted naming and identity protocol in existence — used by humans, organizations, smart contracts, and AI agents alike. It’s integrated across wallets, payment apps, infrastructure providers, and even Web2 companies. Its architecture is modular, composable, and extensible by design.

ENS was a perfect creation at the perfect time. Is it flawless? No. But is it closer to being perfect than others? Absolutely, by a wide margin. That’s why we’re debating it here. No one’s arguing about the other naming services on Twitter.

The Vision and the Market

The trading community isn’t forgotten and deserves its due credit!

Brantly and Furyan are both working on marketplaces that will meet every trader’s needs, and I couldn’t be happier!

Let’s not kid ourselves, ENS’s treasury wouldn’t be where it is today without the speculators and traders who brought money to the game.

It’s sad to see what’s happening with Vision right now — from the product to the team to the end users.

If you look at their Dune dashboard, it generated 27k ETH in trading volume, 130k sales, and I believe it contributed around 20% to the total of ENS domain registrations at the time. So it’s clear that the 20k affected users are the ones who suffer the most here…

As the best Web3 naming protocol in the world, we shouldn’t have let it come to this. We at Namespace even considered launching our own Namespace Marketplace (tell me that doesn’t sound nice!), but decided against it. It’s too much ongoing work and would distract from our core mission. Still, I’m optimistic about Vision’s relaunch, and I’m equally excited about the launch of Grails. And if you didn’t know, Kamiko will be live soon too, built as an open-source infrastructure for ENS domain trading, by Zim (co-founder of Vision).

Brantly, in my view, is one of the most uniquely qualified people in the world to run an ENS-centric marketplace. He’s been there since the early days, weathered every storm, and remains deeply committed to the protocol. Furyan has 3 years of experience in this arena, and it’s very difficult to compete with that experience. He has done more for the trading community than anyone else in the world.

If you’re wondering about the competition at hand, competition is good. The winners here will be the ENS treasury and ultimately, all end users and traders who’ll get the best products and features possible.

As a subname service provider myself, I’m often asked how we view competition from other teams. Sure, there’s a sense of competition that motivates us to be better, but more than that, there’s mutual respect and even collaboration!

Because at the end of the day, we all work for ENS.

Domains, Tokenization, and the Next Frontier

Now, I want to talk about domain tokenization — and the coming ENS x Doma era.

There are over 370M registered domains on the internet. But they’re static. Illiquid. You can’t do much with them besides buy, squat, wait for someone to come knocking, and make you happy with a big offer.

Enter tokenization.

$350B industry ripe for disruption.

This changes everything. Tokenized domains become functional, dynamic, monetizable, programmable, easily tradable, and composable assets in the form of NFTs... that’s a mouthful.

There’s going to be so much value unlocked once domains become tokenized. Every trader in the world will eventually migrate to trading domains onchain, not just because of the new opportunities, but because of how ridiculously simple it’ll be.

If you’ve ever tried buying or transferring a domain through a traditional registrar, you know the pain. I’d honestly rather swim across the ocean with papercuts on my nipples than deal with that process again. In Web3, it’s as easy as selling an NFT — a single transaction, and it’s done, entire ownership transferred in one click.

Tokenizing existing ICANN-enabled and compliant domains changes everything. It infuses them with utility, programmability, and liquidity. Suddenly, you can trade them instantly, speculate on them freely, and for the first time ever, actually build on top of them.

Right now, owning a cool domain is like owning a fancy piece of real estate you can’t develop. But in a tokenized world, that changes.

What if you could for example borrow against valuable domains (since they have intrinsic value), or lease them with smart contract–defined terms (why sell chat.ai for $5M when you could lease it to OpenAI for $100K a month?), fractionalize ownership, or even turn domains into launchpads for new apps and projects. Or what if every domain and subdomain resolves to a webpage and is also an AI agent capable of performing certain actions with your approval?

The possibilities are endless, I can’t even imagine what the builders will come up with… so let me switch gears and give you some numbers.

Among all 1,591 top-level domains, only one stands as truly decentralized, permissionless, and self-sovereign. Maybe .eth… not sure. (sarcasm overload)

Some numbers:

• .com: 157M registrations

• .de: 17M registrations

• .net: 12M registrations

• .site: 1.6M registrations

• .eth: 1.6M registrations

ENS is already in the top 30 — and we’re only getting started.

The Road Ahead

So yeah, I’m beyond bullish on this industry. ENS isn’t just about domains/names, it’s about redefining digital identity, ownership, and the very architecture of the internet.

As I said earlier, it’s already being used as a permissionless domain name service and a native web3 identity service to name humans, AI agents, smart contracts, organizations, tokens, etc. It’s used by apps, products, and companies in the Web3 and Web2 world. Has 1,000+ integrations. 1.6M names, 20M subnames. Works with AI standards.. and don’t even get me started with 8004, x402, zkTLS and… ahh… you get the point…

The noise will fade. The builders will keep building. The vision will keep unfolding. And everything is going to be fine.

🥂