A single Ethereum domain name has just broken 2022 records after selling for 300 ETH, representing over $320,000.
‘000.eth’, an Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain, fetched that amount on Sunday July 3, according to data by NFTgo.io.
Despite the high price, this is only the second highest ENS purchase of all time, the top spot going to ‘Paradigm.eth’, which was sold for 420 ETH in October 2021. That was about $1.5 million at the time.
While the identity of the owner remains unclear, the same wallet that bought ‘000.eth’ also owns other ENS domains like samanatha.eth. It also holds a Bored Ape whose last pice was 115 ETH and a Fidenza whose last price was 85 ETH.
What exactly is Ethereum Name Service (ENS)?
For the uninitiated, crypto wallets tend to have very long strings of characters, which are almost impossible for anyone to remember.
For instance, your wallet may be something like ‘0xa9baf72c6aacdaf573069b8a11f860c53361b30450b44b9a8f40ec72395c671b’.
With Ethereum Name Service (ENS), you can purchase a shorter and easy to remember address that ends in .eth, for example ‘Robert.eth’.
Basically, the same way a normal internet domain name like cnn.com masks the IP address of the website, is the same way an ENS domain masks the long Ethereum address.
A typical .eth domain costs about $5 a year, but as more and more addresses are snapped up, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get a name that matches your own.