ENSv2 Plan Would Freeze New .eth Names Without a Migration Deadline

The ENSv2 activation proposal asks for something modest on the surface: a vote on one transaction that moves new .eth registrations to a new system. What it leaves alone is bigger. Nobody has to move, and there is no deadline.

Nick Johnson's executable draft, posted to the ENS DAO forum on October 11, would freeze new registrations on the current v1 registrar, keep unmigrated names renewable, reserve every existing name for its current owner on v2, and shift registration and resolution there. Renewing on v1 also extends a name's reservation on v2, so a holder who renews as usual keeps their place without doing anything else.

Doing Nothing Still Works, and It Is Not a Countdown

The proposal puts it in one line:

If you own a .eth name and do nothing, it keeps working. It resolves exactly as it does today, and you can keep renewing it as usual; renewing it also extends its reservation on v2. There's no deadline to migrate.

ENS support says the same in its own words: upgrading is optional, and a name can stay on v1, with its 90-day grace period, for as long as it is registered. If it is ever released, the next owner gets it as a v2 name.

The freeze does have one effect a holder will notice. Between the proposal executing and v2 going live, new names cannot be registered on either version, because existing records need synchronising. The proposal expects that to take a few hours. Existing names can still be renewed in that window through ETHRenewerV1, a new contract that takes ownership of the v1 registrar with a narrow job: it can renew names, but it cannot register new ones or add controllers.

Migration Is the One Step With No Way Back

A migrated name leaves something behind. The v1 token moves into a contract called the Graveyard, which holds migrated tokens and reclaims v1 names once they expire past grace. The proposal is careful about the asymmetry. The v1 freeze is reversible, and migration is not: the DAO can undo the freeze with another executable proposal, but the Graveyard has no means of returning what it holds.

What migration buys is a different way of managing a name. ENSv2 replaces the single registry from 2017 with a hierarchy, where every name can carry its own registry for its subnames, and owners can bring their own registry and resolver rather than using the standard ones. Permissions become roles attached to a name instead of irreversible fuses, so a subname owner can be given specific rights, like setting a resolver but not transferring, without wrapping the name first.

Renewals Cost More, Wherever the Name Sits

Pricing reaches people who never migrate. Annual fees for names of five characters or more rise 60%, from $5 to $8. Three- and four-character names keep their current prices, at $640 and $160 a year. Longer bookings get cheaper: taking six or more years at once cuts the annual cost by about 44%, and registrations and renewals are paid in USDC or DAI rather than ETH.

The timing matters more than the number. The DAO approved this pricing in EP 6.43, and the proposal applies it from the moment the proposal executes, including to renewals of names that have not migrated yet. On v1, that means the higher fee arrives before the new system does and even for holders who stay put. Fees on v2, including renewals through ETHRenewerV1, are paid to the ENS Endowment, which is owned by the ENS Foundation and managed by Karpatkey.

The Grace Period Shrinks to 28 Days on v2

Names that stay on v1 keep their 90-day grace period. On v2 it becomes 28 days: the name stops working and cannot be transferred, but anyone can renew it at the normal price, and nobody else can register it.

A few edge cases are worth knowing before anyone clicks upgrade. Names that have already lapsed past their grace period are not carried over, and become available for anyone to register on v2. A name inside its grace period cannot be upgraded until it is renewed first. A handful of Name Wrapper names cannot upgrade at all, because a permission on them was revoked, and a subname can only upgrade once its parent has, unless its own permission was revoked.

The Vote Comes First, and There Is No Date Yet

Only one of the activation's five stages needs a vote. Stage 2 is a single atomic DAO transaction making 15 calls, among them removing every remaining controller from the v1 BaseRegistrar so new v1 registrations freeze, authorising ETHRenewerV1, and authorising the Graveyard. The rest has either already happened or is something ENS Labs commits to carry out once the proposal executes, ending with the DAO holding every privileged role over both v1 and v2, and Labs holding none in either. The activation vote is being tracked in the DAO's voting period bulletin for Term 7.

Executable proposals need a quorum of 1% of ENS voting supply, about one million affirmative votes, plus majority approval across a seven-day voting window, and a two-day timelock before the approved changes take effect. ENSv2 is not live and no launch date has been confirmed.

Two things changed after the draft went up. The proposal was edited on October 13: configuration issues in the original root registry deployment were found and the root registry and its dependent contracts were redeployed, and Blockful spotted that fees would have gone to the DAO wallet rather than the endowment, so those contracts were redeployed too, changing several addresses. One delegate, posting as FireEyes, said it would vote yes while criticising an abandoned L2, an under-used delegation incentive programme, a takeover of the DAO through ENS Labs delegation, and a newly instated foundation.

Until the vote lands, the instruction for a holder is the dull one. Keep renewing, expect the new stablecoin price when it comes, and treat any message offering to renew or upgrade a name for you as something to ignore: ENS support warns specifically that ENSv2 is not live and that nobody should ever renew or upgrade from a link.