ENS Labs proposes mainnet launch of ENSv2, freezing new .eth registrations on v1

Details of the ENSv2 proposal

ENS founder Nick Johnson, who posts under the nickname nick.eth, submitted the executable proposal on the ENS governance forum on October 11. The plan consolidates 15 separate transactions from the DAO timelock into a single atomic transaction. This transaction removes all five controllers currently authorized to operate the v1 BaseRegistrar and reinstates only two: ETHRenewerV1 and a specialized Graveyard contract.

ETHRenewerV1 will manage renewals for names that are already reserved on the new v2 system, while the Graveyard contract will allow claims on expired names that have passed their grace period. Following these changes, registrar ownership is set to transfer to ETHRenewerV1, which cannot register new names or add new controllers. No voting date for the proposal has been set, and neither Tally nor Snapshot votes have been linked at this stage.

ENS (Ethereum Name Service) is a protocol that assigns readable names, such as ‘nft.eth’, to Ethereum blockchain addresses, simplifying crypto wallet usage for users and applications.

Impact on .eth name owners and registration process

The proposal clarified that existing .eth name owners are not required to take any action. According to the post, “If you own a .eth name and do nothing, it keeps working,” assuring users there is no migration deadline. Owners remain free to transfer their names to ENSv2 at any time using the ENS app.

However, names that have expired beyond their grace period will not be carried over and will be open for registration by any user on the new v2 system.

ENSv2 reduces the post-expiry grace period for names from 90 days to 28 days. To offset this change, each name’s v2 expiry date will be extended by 62 days, as indicated in the proposal.

A brief pause in registrations is expected. Both v1 and v2 systems will be closed to new registrations during the transition, a window expected to last only a few hours.

Governance and control changes

The proposal outlines that only one of the five activation stages requires a DAO vote—the final step, which is for ENS Labs to renounce its administrator rights over the v2 contracts and transfer them to the DAO timelock. Before this, ENS Labs plans to update name reservations after the v1 freeze, open the v2 registrar for sign-ups, and route name lookups through v2. These interim steps are commitments by ENS Labs and do not form part of the onchain vote.

When the process is completed, ENSv2 will be controlled by the DAO just as v1 is now, with ENS Labs holding no special privileges in either system.

Registration fees on v2 will be directed to the DAO timelock, which has managed these contracts since their deployment.

Tradeoffs and reversibility

The proposal acknowledges certain tradeoffs, such as the removal of an emergency override for v1 that previously allowed a designated controller to disable a registrar controller without requiring a vote. “The v1 freeze is reversible; migrating a name is not,” the proposal stressed. While the DAO could restore v1 controllers through another executable action, tokens already migrated to v2 cannot be returned to the older version.

The proposal explains that while freezing v1 could be undone, any migration of names to v2 is permanent.

ENS Labs originally proposed ENSv2 as a layer 2 solution in 2024. According to the latest update, the entire v2 contract set has now been deployed on the Ethereum mainnet.

Mini dictionary: DAO timelock, a smart contract mechanism that delays the execution of governance-approved transactions to provide transparency, allow for community review, or serve as a security measure.