ENS abandons plans for Namechain L2, citing Ethereum scaling

Ethereum domain sanction work supplier ENS has canceled plans to motorboat a furniture 2 arsenic portion of its ENSv2 upgrade, alternatively opting to motorboat a revamped protocol straight connected Ethereum. 

In a blog station connected Friday, ENS pb developer nick.eth explained that the determination was partially owed to a “99% simplification successful ENS registration state costs implicit the past year” amid a fig of important upgrades to the Ethereum network.

“Put simply: Ethereum L1 is scaling, and it's scaling faster than astir anyone predicted 2 years ago. The caller Fusaka upgrade raised the state bounds to 60 million, a 2x summation from the opening of 2025,” nick.eth said, adding: 

“Now Ethereum halfway developers are targeting 200 cardinal state bounds targets successful 2026, a 3x summation from today, and that's earlier immoderate ZK upgrades land.”

The Fusaka upgrade, 1 of the astir caller Ethereum upgrades that went unrecorded successful aboriginal December, has helped Ethereum thrust down state fees owed to its significant scaling capabilities for some the L1 and the ecosystem of L2s. 

Blog station announcing changes to ENS’ upgrade plans. Source: ENS

ENS initially announced its L2 Namechain successful November 2024, with the task stating that it would marque it easier and cheaper for users to registry domain names via the usage of rollups. 

Nick.eth emphasized that the discourse has present changed dramatically, and it is present viable to physique straight connected the L1 alternatively of opting for a full-fledged L2 successful a bid to trim costs. 

“Huge L1 scalability was not portion of the Ethereum roadmap, and the connection was wide that L2s were the mode forward. We needed to conscionable our users wherever the ecosystem was heading, and that meant gathering Namechain,” helium said.

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With plans for Namechain present gone, the ENS pb developer outlined that the task is inactive moving connected important show and inferior improvements via ENSv2, portion the protocol volition inactive beryllium highly interoperable with L2s. 

“The immense bulk of our engineering effort has gone into ENSv2 itself: the caller registry architecture, the improved ownership model, amended handling of sanction expiration, and the flexibility that comes from giving each sanction its ain registry,” helium said, adding: 

“Deciding to enactment connected L1 doesn't mean we're closing the doorway connected L2s entirely. The flexibility of the ENSv2 architecture makes L2 names much interoperable. Our caller registration travel abstracts the complexity crosschain transactions.”

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