The argument went that while businesses could bring their DNS domains into ENS or Web3, individuals never would because:
1. Buying a DNS domain name is a foreign clunky experience for individuals.
2. Importing a DNS domain into ENS is a technical and complicated process.
However, this was rooted in the belief that the process to buy a DNS domain would never change when in actuality you’ll soon be able to buy one on NFT marketplaces just as you’d buy a digital jpeg. (See the first DNS domain to change hands on chain)
It also assumed that domain name registrars would never take care of the importing process for the user, which some are now in the process of doing. And finally, it ignored the fact that DNS registries would be able to mass market their top level domain names to a wider market than ever before if the above pieces came together, which is that the target market would become all individuals on earth looking for a cool username versus just businesses looking for a promotional website URL.
You can have a vanity ENS name. No .eth required, just your name. Like these:
How's it done? Real DNS tlds imported into ENS. Can be used as fully working crypto wallet names, NFTs, websites and more. Make sure the tld has DNSSEC support. pic.twitter.com/8fe1k93Nrj
— Seán Murray | sean3.eth (@financeguy74) June 19, 2023
Domain name investor Michael Cyger, for example, just bought the domain mi.ke for nothing more than the flex. (See his blog post: https://bio.link/mike/p/mike). Cyger doesn’t reference web3 in his reasoning at all but he offers plenty of examples of domain names like his that are person centric, domains like ma.tt, k.im, etc. “It’s 100% a social flex if there ever was one,” Cyger writes of short domain names. “And they often evoke curiosity, making people wonder, ‘How did you acquire that?'”
Sure, maybe the average web3 user would be perfectly content to be something like david8213.eth or david294.crypto or david971.nft, but if given the chance to own dav.id by buying it in the same manner as those names, would they consider it? I think they might. Especially since dav.id would be under no obligation to also use it as a website but could if they wanted to! That’s up to the user. The .eth and .crypto and .nft can’t do that. While one can certainly appreciate that DNS domains in web3 are not completely “decentralized” I hardly think the average person, who isn’t a business, would care at all. If it’s about the flex and the username, then the 1,000+ tlds offered in DNS are going to speak to a segment of potential web3 buyers no matter what. Remember this.