On April 29th, I created and posted a video on twitter espousing the value of a .eth name through ENS. The video is about a fictional bike shop owner named Jeremy whose social media user profile is randomly taken from him by a social platform (i.e. facebook). While it garnered a bit of attention (34,000 views), some people told me that losing a social media username was not a genuine fear that people had, at least not to the point that they’d ever be interested in buying a general purpose cross-platform username that was protected from confiscation. It was just too techy for anyone to care. Plus, people who lose their much beloved usernames must be bad bad bad people right?
On July 26th, the news wires were flooded with the alleged crime of the century, a photographer named Gene X. Hwang had his twitter username confiscated so that X could use it as part of its rebrand away from twitter. Having long enjoyed @X as his identity, Hwang suddenly found himself in X corp’s crosshairs. Though he was a good sport about it, the world reacted accordingly:
WAIT, A PLATFORM CAN JUST TAKE YOUR NAME?!
Yes, yes, they can.
It appears, perhaps, that the idea of a name that can’t be confiscated actually holds some weight.