⚓️ demand-based ENS fees
gm. I’m trying to be more open-minded this week.
this doesn’t mean you can shill me on a project floor to sweep (I have no ETH left anyway FWIW), but I’m open to learning about projects I’ve typically been apathetic or critical of.
let’s start here…
ALPHA ⚓️
the Cool Cat vs Gutter Cat war is well-documented. however, Gutter Cats have been smokin’ Cool Cats recently (when it comes to the price floor). it’s not a war…it’s nothing more than a catfight these days.
Gutter Cats, their various Gutter animals, and Clones have all been some of the most stable projects in the NFT space. but this weekend, they caught the attention of NFT Twitter and some FUD in the process because of their newest DNA-2 mint.
to fill you in, the Gutter contains 4 collections - Cats, Rats, Pigeons, and Dogs. then, at the beginning of summer, they released Gutter Clones, which are the “mutant” versions of the 4 species.
now…there will be a second Cloned version of the species, which will require that you burn 1) a DNA-2 vial - dutch auctioned this weekend 2) a DNA-1 Clone 3) their upcoming token $GANG.
it’s an impressive swing from the Gang… which continues to grow its user base.
sure, their model is very similar to Yuga’s, but that’s not a bad one to follow if you want to keep rewarding your users.
still…those of us outside of the ecosystem are getting a little confused about the endgame here. it’s not quite at the level of Pixel Vault confusion, but it’s inching there with all the different collections and tokens.
it comes down to $GANG, which now stands to be the most anticipated token drop of Q4 (unless $MASK wants to also bless us).
BETA ⚓️
speaking of being open-minded, Vitalik thinks that there should be demand-based fees on ENS domains.
what does this mean?
imagine that I’m squatting on oracle.eth or amazon.eth. I can, in theory, renew that domain forever for less than $20/year. it’s such a low risk for the user that it’s a pseudo monopoly for the owner. Amazon will either need to pay up *big* or buy something else.
this is how ENS is built now. in this scenario, the domain owner…not the big business…has the power. what a novel idea!
what a demand-based, recurring fees would do is flip it back in favor of the big pockets.
with the structure proposed by Vitalik however, a large offer coming from Amazon would make it so the squatter would pay an extra premium based on a percentage of the highest offer.
which seems fair until you start thinking about all the kevin.eths, france.eths or even worse…biv.eths of the world. individuals who were *early* can “squat” on their first names, surnames, or digital identities with ease right now.
however, a demand-based recurring fee could instantly change the power structure to favor the rich Kevins who want to bully that owner into selling. it would be ridiculous to think that an individual could swing fees jumping from $20/year to thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars, per year.
it’s a tough balancing act, but demand-based fees ain’t it (yet). stick to the merge Vitalik and we’ll come up with a good solution for domain squatters!
DELTA ⚓️
GoblinTown’s newest companions, Grumples, were revealed and they are super cool. so cool in fact that Iceman himself Val Kilmer has gotten in on the action. in other news, I still haven’t seen Top Gun Maverick, something that *everyone* tells me I *need* to watch ASAP. I’ll get to it eventually.
it’s atypical I shout out crypto-only personalities, but Pomp had a nice article about tying your identity to a single asset on Friday. as someone whose newsletter literally contains the words “NFT”, I fall into this camp and it’s partly the reason I’m trying to be more open-minded this week.
