According to ENS Domains, Ethereum Name Service domain ownership has surpassed 1.8 million names with 378,000 new .eth registrations in July alone.
The surge in registrations comes as the Ethereum community prepares for an upcoming merger next month, which will switch the top blockchain for Dapps, DAOs and NFTs from a proof-of-work consensus algorithm to a proof-of-stake.
In a tweet announcing the record number of registrations, ENS Domains said it saw 5,400 ETH (approximately $8.8 million) in revenue and 48,000 new Ethereum accounts using at least one ENS name, as well as the domain on OpenSea last month. Viewed over 99% of sales volume. ,
July 2022 stats for ENS
– 378K new .eth registrations (1.86m names in total) – $6.8m in protocol revenue (all goes to the DAO) – 5,400 ETH in revenue (highest ever) – 48K new eth accounts w/ at least 1 ENS name (total 508k) -> 99% of OpenSea Domain Volume pic.twitter.com/TdD16FOX2d — ens.eth (@ensdomains) 1 August 2022
While the merge may play a role in the increased activity, Khori Whitaker, executive director of True Names Ltd., the company behind ENS Domains, believes the boom is more organic.
“There is an extremely active and passionate ecosystem of ENS advocates, and they are independently and systematically creating sub-communities and spreading the word about what is possible with ENS Domains,” Whitaker said. decrypt in an email.
Whitaker says we wouldn’t see an increase in registrations without the efforts of independent developers in the ecosystem to market and other ENS-related apps and groups like “999 Club,” “10k Club,” “TLC” Club and Groups . The “100k Club,” among others.
Another factor that Whitaker said added to the increase was a drop in gas fees for Ethereum transactions. “We’ve seen that when the gas fee goes down, domain registration activity goes up,” he said.
According to Whitaker, the company has also begun to see an increase in the presence of non-English speaking communities in the ENS ecosystem, including Arabic and Spanish speaking communities.
The Ethereum Name Service or ENS manages the issuance and renewal of .eth domain names built on Ethereum. These domains can be sold as non-fungible tokens, known as NFTs, cryptographically unique tokens attached to digital (and sometimes physical) content, providing proof of ownership.
The ENS domain can also be linked to one’s cryptocurrency wallet. Instead of proving the sender with a long ethereum address, users can give their .eth domain name and receive transactions.
Other providers of crypto-related domain names have also hit the market, offering .sol (Solana), .bitcoin and .zil (Zilliqa) domains. These domain types have also become popular ways to show that you “belong” to Web3.
In June, legendary actor Anthony Hopkins added a .eth domain to his name on his official Twitter account, asking for recommendations from fellow Web3 celebrities Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Fallon and Reese Witherspoon on which NFT Hopkins should buy first.
“People are looking for quality projects and quality protocols,” Whitaker said. “Web3 has many interesting and fun projects, and the Ethereum name service is certainly one of the most prominent.”