ENS: Why there’s more to the story than a hike in .eth domain name registrations

According to Dune Analytics, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has recorded a spike in registrations so far this month. Here, it’s worth pointing out that this uptick comes on the back of tremendous growth logged across the month of August.

August 2022 stats for ENS

– 301K new .eth registrations (total 2.17m names)
– $4.7m in protocol revenue (all goes to the @ENS_DAO)
– 2,744 ETH in revenue (3rd highest month)
– 34K new eth accounts w/ at least 1 ENS name (total 540k)
– >99% of OpenSea domain vol pic.twitter.com/utU8i4cBMT

— ens.eth (@ensdomains) September 1, 2022

The reasons behind the same are not far-fetched by any means though.

Since ENS domain name purchases are made with Ether (ETH), the decline in the altcoin’s price, culminating in a fall in gas fees paid on the Ethereum Network, are responsible for the surge in ENS registrations over the last two months.

In fact, according to Messari, average transaction fees to use Ethereum have fallen by 29% over the past month. 

Source: Messari

So far, so good

Dune Analytics also revealed that with 372,146 new .eth registrations made so far this month, an 18% hike has been seen over the registrations last month. This count represents the third highest monthly .eth registrations since September 2021. 

Thanks to the aforementioned hike, the total .eth names, at press time, stood at 2,535,207.

Source: Dune Analytics

At the time of writing, the total number of addresses that hold at least one .eth name was 566,762. In the last 24 days, 29,409 new addresses have made at least one .eth name purchase, Dune Analytics also revealed. This represented an 18% drop from the new addresses that picked up an ENS domain name in August.

While new .eth names registration rose this month, primary ENS names registrations have declined. A Primary ENS name record makes a user’s Ethereum address point to an ENS name. With a primary ENS name, decentralized applications (dAPPs) can find and display such user’s ENS name when connected to the user’s Ethereum account. 

Finally, primary name registrations have dropped by 17% in September. So far this month, only 19,167 primary names have been registered, bringing the total primary names registered to 403,459.

Source: Dune Analytics

Furthermore, in spite of the growth in domain name registrations this month, there has been a drop in protocol revenue when compared to what was totalled towards the end of  August.

At the time of writing, total revenue for registration and renewal of .eth domain names stood at $4.5 million – A 4% decline from the $4.7 million logged in August. However, with five days left till the end of the month, this is still expected to see some growth.

Source: Dune Analytics