They say it’s the rarity, simplicity, or utility behind a short ENS .eth domain that has allowed communities like the #10kclub and #999club to crop up seemingly overnight. As the mad dash to mint out 3-digit or 4-digit variations of domains played out last week, some seasoned pros in the NFT scene were bewildered by the conviction exhibited by eager buyers.
But there might be something there, a magic tweet to hang their hat on. Vitalik Buterin, internationally renowned co-founder of Ethereum, not only advertises his own ENS domain (Vitalik.eth), he talked up the value of a three & four-letter name back in 2020.
Three and four-letter ENS names: they're a fixed-supply asset *and* you can do things with them!
In the ethereum community, that’s about as close as one could hope for as an endorsement of the value of domain ownership, and particularly for ones with minimal characters.
Got a .eth domain with less than 5 digits? You get access to the open bar event taking place at The Refinery Rooftop in NYC on May 11 from 6-9pm for FREE. Must be 21 or older to enter. A whitelist for 3-digit and 4-digit .eth ENS holders may be forthcoming but holders will be accepted in at the door for free regardless.
All other interested persons can come but the entry fee is $25 payable only in crypto (eth, btc, ltc, sol, doge etc all accepted.) Please register online ahead of time!
Can your phone number be an ENS domain? It most certainly can, and depending on the situation, probably should be. Specifically, we’re talking about literally registering your 10-digit phone number as a .eth.
Phone numbers are already popularly relied upon for identity. Hello, 2FA anyone? But more to the point, one of the core purposes of ENS is to consolidate long impossible-to-remember wallet strings into memorable email address style domain names. Great for crypto adoption, but perhaps still daunting for a customer trying to remember what the .eth address for a business transaction was supposed to be. Telling a customer to simply send their payment to the company phone number (like 9177220808.eth for example) ensures that if they have your phone number then they have your wallet address as well. They don’t need to remember or look up another name.
Ultimately, whether or not this makes sense is up to you. It may be good to register your phone # as an ENS even if you don’t advertise it just in case someone’s natural instinct is to send a payment to your phone # instead of whatever way you had proposed. At least this way you’ll still get it. Several years ago, the advent of Ethereum caused people to consider how everything could be “tokenized.” Well with ENS, everything can be wallet-ized. You can decide to what extreme you want to take it.
If you ever dreamed of organically picking up a .eth domain with a string of just 3 or 4 numbers, you’re too late, they’re all sold out. What began as a fun competition between whales to collect all of the .eth domains between 000 and 999 (at a price tag of $680/year each) sparked a wild frenzy to buy up 4-digit .eth domains once all the 3-digit ones sold out.
At a cost of approximately $200/year, 4-digit .eth domains are less expensive, though there are 10x as many available as 3-digit domains. The large supply, however, led few to speculate that all of them might actually be bought up. That all changed within 24 hours when it was reported that nearly 30% of all 4-digit domains had been acquired in record time. By Tuesday morning, the crypto community on twitter came to the realization that given enough time (weeks maybe) they would probably all end up being bought. That only accelerated the buying frenzy.
By late Tuesday afternoon there was a growing belief that it could even be much sooner, maybe even by Wednesday night. It was even quicker than that. Every single 4-digit .eth domain had been minted as of approximately 10pm EST that same day.
The #999club, an informal collective of 3-digit .eth domain holders were quick to congratulate their 4-digit brethren. A #999club twitter spaces call that followed was full of predictions that short number identifiers would be the future of identity on the blockchain. On OpenSea, 4-digit .eth domains immediately began to trade for double the mint price and holders of them already began to plan the strategic launch of a group discord and exclusive club.
It remains to be seen what will come of it all.
Sincerely, 3531.eth. I am not ashamed to say that I FOMO’d in.
