The Defiant

Ethereum Name Service Jumps to $1B Market Cap After Airdrop of ENS Token

ENS, the governance token for Ethereum Name Service, soared after its airdrop this week.

By: Owen Fernau Loading...

Ethereum Name Service Jumps to $1B Market Cap After Airdrop of ENS Token

ENS, the governance token of Ethereum Name Service, hit a market capitalization of $1.15B in early morning trading EST. That’s equal to about 10% of the value of GoDaddy, the 24-year-old internet domain registrar and web hosting company.

Airdropped ENS became claimable on Nov. 8. While it looks like Ethereum Name Service came out of nowhere it actually started back in 2016 as a side project of lead developer Nick Johnson.

State, as they go by on Twitter and who works on governance at Aave, is a major proponent of the project. “Seems like ENS could become [the] basis for web3 identity and portable profile that u can plug into metaverse/games so it succeeds and everyone wants one = more revenue?,” State tweeted. “It’s a good coin,” as State told The Defiant in a DM.

Like GoDaddy, Ethereum Name Service makes money when people register and renew domain names. Unlike GoDaddy, the Web3-native project is itself a naming protocol.

Starting in June, monthly name registration spiked, with Ethereum Name Service logging 20,000 registrations per month since then, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard by Makoto Inoue, a developer who works for the project.

Revenue has spiked, too, crossing the $2M mark in three of the last four months, November included, according to another Dune Analytics dashboard by Inoue.

In all, the Ethereum Name Service has racked up the second largest treasury in crypto, according to Open-Orgs.info.

And the project is sitting at the 113th slot in overall market cap. Not bad for a token that’s only been live for two days (and five years in the making).

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