Ethereum Name Service developers disagree with Vitalik ‘here’ but ENS remains…

Ethereum [ETH] co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum Name Service [ENS] developers are at loggerheads due to the newly proposed pricing arrangements. On 9 September, Vitalik published a post via his ENS website, asking if the domains should follow a recurring pricing structure.

According to him, ENS domains are very cheap as the cost to maintain a five-word one was at most $5. While highlighting the property rights, and efficient market challenges, Vitalik mentioned that an increased price structure could offer a solution. Additionally, he mentioned the possibility of  using the revenue generated to fund the ENS Decentralized Autonomous Organization (ENSDAO).

It’s a no-no

In response to the ETH founder’s proposal, ENS developers seemed to be on an opposite site of the page. First, it was Nick Johnson pointing out some flaws in the proposal.

The developer noted that Vitalik’s piece was thoughtful. However, he argued that there were some design constraints, as well as the externalities of the naming system. Also, the idea behind paying more for a name may be untempting. Johnson said,

“The people hurt by a change in ownership may not be the same people who get paid for the name. The value of a name to a third-party does not necessarily correspond to the profit gained by its current owner owning it.”

Interestingly, Johnson was not the only one opposed to Vitalik’s idea. Another ENS developer, Jeff Lau also shared Johnson’s opinion. She cited that Vitalik focused too much on funding rather than user accessibility in his proposal.

On V's idea of using bids as an input, it *feels* quite complicated to me. It would require a cryptopunks-style onchain bid/ask system. And it would probably mean 10s of thousands of bids being posted on-chain.

— jefflau.eth (@_jefflau) September 9, 2022

For ENS, it was a case of being unperturbed by the happenings. In fact, it looked like a worse case for the token price as it chose the downward trend rather than follow the crypto market recovery in the last 24 hours.

Based on CoinMarketCap’s report, ENS had lost 4.86% of its previous day value at press time. Besides, its 24-hour volume had also dwindled in the same period according to the on-chain platform, Santiment. While it was $132.85 million on 9 September, the records at press time showed the volume at $117.71 million.

Source: Santiment

This decrease in volume also expands to domain registrations. Despite hitting two million registrations less than a month after reaching one million,  more sign-ups have failed to reach impeccable numbers.

According to Dune Analytics, the total number of registrations was now 2,310,109. September registration was up to 152,077 but the likelihood of hitting a million looks bleak.