ENS Labs Proposes Layer-2 Expansion for Ethereum Name Service

On May 28, ENS Labs proposed that the Ethereum Name Service expand to layer-2 scaling protocols in an effort called “ENSv2.”

“We’re not just migrating core parts of the ENS protocol,” the team said in a blog post before adding that it is taking knowledge from the last seven years at the frontier of Web3, aiming to “re-envision the architecture from the ground up.”

Introducing ENSv2: The Next Generation of ENS 🎉🎉🎉

ENS Labs is excited to announce our proposal to extend the ENS protocol to a Layer 2 network. This move isn’t just about migrating parts of the protocol; we’re re-envisioning the architecture from the ground up! pic.twitter.com/3xM6owTpKk

— ens.eth (@ensdomains) May 28, 2024

Ethereum Domains Faster and Cheaper

The Ethereum Name Services has millions of .eth names registered and thousands of integrations, including dapps, wallets, top-level domains, and browsers, the team stated.

By expanding to layer-2s, ENS will become more accessible and cheaper to use for a wider range of users. However, ENS Labs has yet to select a specific layer-2 network for the migration.

The primary goals of the expansion, which was mulled in July 2023, aim to make ENS more decentralized, enable new use cases and integrations, and overcome constraints of the Ethereum mainnet.

Moreover, moving to layer-2 offers some major benefits, including lower gas fees for registering and renewing .eth names, more control and customization through a hierarchical registry system, and improved multi-chain interoperability by connecting .eth names across networks.

“The release of EIP-4844 has made layer 2 networks based on Ethereum vastly more affordable and scalable, which was a big driving factor for ENS’s proposal,” said Head of Product and Strategy at ENS Labs, Eskender Abebe.

ENS Labs will put forward an executable proposal to request an annual budget increase of 4 million USDC from the ENS DAO to hire additional developers and cover infrastructure costs related to development and deployment. The proposal was put forward for discussion on the ENS DAO before it goes for a governance vote.

The layer-2 ecosystem recently hit a total value locked all-time high of $47.7 billion, coinciding with the ETH price pump, according to L2beat.

ENS Price Outlook

The Ethereum Name Service native token didn’t react to the announcement and was trading flat on the day at around $26 at the time of writing.

ENS has almost doubled in price over the past fortnight; however, it has surged from around $14 in mid-May to hit a three-month high of just under $28 earlier this week.

ENS spiked to $80 when it was airdropped to domain holders in November 2021 but remains down 69% from that peak.