A Look at the 280k .ETH Names Set to Become Available August 2nd
- Top 500 companies
- Celebs
- Crypto companies
- Popular keywords
- How to obtain these names once released
Since names started expiring on May 4th of this year (which started a 90 day grace period), we’ve introduced a series of new features to encourage people to renew before their names are released August 2nd. There are currently over 20k names renewed (a total duration of 28k years!) since the beginning of this year but according to Dune Analytics, we have still nearly 280k names (out of over 350k .ETH names in total) to be renewed.
The large number of unrenewed names was expected. Back in 2019 just before we transitioned into permanent registrar where annual rent was introduced, we estimated that 82% of the names (out of 270k names at that time) had been squatted.
Courtesy of Dune Analytics, we explored about 23k names which were auctioned with more than the minimum back in 2017 initial auction. You can simply search via Dune Analytics website to find out which names were auctioned off at what price.
As I did during short name auctions, I did a quick analysis to see which names people thought would be high value (hence worth squatting).
Top 500 web companies
I used the same dataset I did for short name auction and I have identified 74 entries. The top 10 by highest bids are as follows.
╔═══════╦═══════════════════════╦════════════╗
║ rank ║ name ║ bid (ETH) ║
╠═══════╬═══════════════════════╬════════════╣
║ 1 ║ alibaba.eth ║ 301.0 ║
║ 2 ║ dropbox.eth ║ 206.0 ║
║ 3 ║ harvard.eth ║ 188.0 ║
║ 4 ║ android.eth ║ 132.0 ║
║ 5 ║ washington.eth ║ 111.111 ║
║ 6 ║ pinterest.eth ║ 76.23 ║
║ 7 ║ princeton.eth ║ 57.58 ║
║ 8 ║ wordpress.eth ║ 43.8652 ║
║ 9 ║ marriott.eth ║ 36.5 ║
║ 10 ║ huffingtonpost.eth ║ 30.0 ║
╚═══════╩═══════════════════════╩════════════╝This seems extremely high when compared with short name auction where amazon was bid for 100 ETH. Please bear in mind that the previous auction was a deposit model in which users could get the deposit back when they released the name, whereas short name is spent. The name owners can get the locked ETH back when they “release” the name. Over 173k ETH names ($40 m USD) has been locked of which 53k ETH has been released. This means 120k ETH ($29 m USD) is still locked and awaiting to be released.
Crypto companies
I extracted 299 crypto companies via dap.ps and everest.link, popular dapp registries. It matched just 25 names so I will list them all here.
╔══════╦═════════════════════╦═══════════╗
║ rank ║ name ║ bidprice ║
╠══════╬═════════════════════╬═══════════╣
║ 1 ║ polkadot.eth ║ 16.67 ║
║ 2 ║ memefactory.eth ║ 12.6 ║
║ 3 ║ ethlance.eth ║ 12.16 ║
║ 4 ║ makerdao.eth ║ 2.22 ║
║ 5 ║ everest.eth ║ 2.22 ║
║ 6 ║ openzeppelin.eth ║ 1.24 ║
║ 7 ║ blockfolio.eth ║ 1.12 ║
║ 8 ║ paradigm.eth ║ 1.0 ║
║ 9 ║ blockgeeks.eth ║ 0.9 ║
║ 10 ║ ethereumclassic.eth ║ 0.895 ║
║ 11 ║ kickback.eth ║ 0.53 ║
║ 12 ║ etherbots.eth ║ 0.5 ║
║ 13 ║ playtime.eth ║ 0.33 ║
║ 14 ║ compound.eth ║ 0.117 ║
║ 15 ║ theblock.eth ║ 0.1 ║
║ 16 ║ ethercards.eth ║ 0.05 ║
║ 17 ║ ethlend.eth ║ 0.05 ║
║ 18 ║ etheremon.eth ║ 0.05 ║
║ 19 ║ gridplus.eth ║ 0.05 ║
║ 20 ║ livepeer.eth ║ 0.0115 ║
║ 21 ║ decentraland.eth ║ 0.0112 ║
║ 22 ║ betoken.eth ║ 0.0110001 ║
║ 23 ║ messari.eth ║ 0.01 ║
║ 24 ║ whiteblock.eth ║ 0.01 ║
║ 25 ║ dragonereum.eth ║ 0.01 ║
╚══════╩═════════════════════╩═══════════╝A couple of names actually have resolvers set which indicates they may actually be used. If you are the owners of these names, make sure you renew (I notified some of the teams so theymay have renewed by the time this blog post is out).
Celebs
I downloaded a list of over 4000 celeb names from “Art of memory” website and had 147 matches. The dataset is quite old (2011) so not including the more recent celebrities. None the less, it’s hilarious to think that people thought that they could sell names to likes of tyalorswift.eth and donaldtrump.eth .
╔══════╦════════════════════════╦═════════════╗
║ rank ║ name ║ bidprice ║
╠══════╬════════════════════════╬═════════════╣
║ 1 ║ michael.eth ║ 50.0 ║
║ 2 ║ taylorswift.eth ║ 34.7623 ║
║ 3 ║ justinbieber.eth ║ 32.8751 ║
║ 4 ║ lebronjames.eth ║ 16.8571 ║
║ 5 ║ kimkardashian.eth ║ 16.852 ║
║ 6 ║ mileycyrus.eth ║ 16.42 ║
║ 7 ║ phoenix.eth ║ 14.0 ║
║ 8 ║ magicjohnson.eth ║ 12.88 ║
║ 9 ║ jackson.eth ║ 12.31 ║
║ 10 ║ donaldtrump.eth ║ 11.0 ║
╚══════╩════════════════════════╩═════════════╝Frequently used keywords
Due to the character length restriction of the initial auction, many people bid on the combination of words to make it longer than 6 characters.
The following are the list of keywords based on the occurrence in the names.
╔══════╦════════╦════════════╦════════════════════╗
║ rank ║ name ║ occurrence ║ combined bid price ║
╠══════╬════════╬════════════╬════════════════════╣
║ 1 ║ coin ║ 219 ║ 271.82700 ║
║ 2 ║ the ║ 205 ║ 96.70683 ║
║ 3 ║ crypto ║ 158 ║ 92.45264 ║
║ 4 ║ pay ║ 149 ║ 140.08028 ║
║ 5 ║ group ║ 135 ║ 69.48181 ║
║ 6 ║ chain ║ 132 ║ 81.12947 ║
║ 7 ║ bit ║ 114 ║ 293.23015 ║
║ 8 ║ eth ║ 110 ║ 332.43770 ║
║ 9 ║ smart ║ 109 ║ 299.77311 ║
║ 10 ║ block ║ 101 ║ 21.22122 ║
║ 11 ║ token ║ 100 ║ 29.34514 ║
║ 12 ║ china ║ 98 ║ 47.84436 ║
║ 13 ║ world ║ 97 ║ 43.66079 ║
║ 14 ║ wallet ║ 97 ║ 1321.21824 ║
║ 15 ║ market ║ 91 ║ 10233.27795 ║
║ 16 ║ and ║ 88 ║ 27.96061 ║
║ 17 ║ man ║ 86 ║ 17.51550 ║
║ 18 ║ ether ║ 84 ║ 137.29072 ║
║ 19 ║ online ║ 82 ║ 109.11941 ║
║ 20 ║ one ║ 81 ║ 292.57249 ║
╚══════╩════════╩════════════╩════════════════════╝As you would have expected, some crypto specific terms such as “coin”, “crypto”, “pay”, chain”, “bit”, ”eth”, “block” and “token” are among these keywords.
The full dataset and (hacky) script to generate the data is on my Github site so feel free to dig into the data and let me know if you find any other interesting patterns.
How to obtain these names once released
Once the 90 days grace period ends on August 2nd, these names will be available to register with the ENS App or any other site which offers similar registration services.
To prevent from another gas price surge to grab these names, we are introducing a way to handle these expired names more gracefully where registration price starts with premium and it goes down gradually (similar to Dutch auction) so stay tuned for the update.
