February was an interesting month for ENS as the market continues to move sideways. Registrations significantly slipped from last months 56,000 to 40,480, but still, that’s very impressive action in tough market conditions. People continue to search, register, and hold domains without stressing for an end buyer...something not always practiced in web3.
🤑 Top Sales
As for top sales, a word and prominent web3 acronym take the top spot this month; followed by the digits, of course:
🔟 Top Ten
In the top ten this month, four were words and six were digits. Digits remain as the top category when it comes to liquidity and interest. Although digits are leading the way in terms of liquidity, there were some very notable sales this month on words that have impacted, and will continue to impact the market over time. Here are just a few of the ones that are notable:
- checks.eth - 19.99 ETH (sold to Jack Butcher - VisualizeValue Founder)
- nodes.eth - 5 ETH (sold to Jack Butcher - VisualizeValue Founder)
- johndeere.eth - 2.4 ETH
(we’d also like to note that there was a significant increase in the number of six digit domains fetching well over 1+ ETH).
🔎 Monthly Similar Search
Similar to last week, and hopefully soon to be a Kodex ENS Monthly Roundup staple, is using Kodex’s natural language powered similar search to find domains based on this top monthly sales list. Below are a few that we find interesting and still available to be registered:
- thordarson.eth - expired, unregistered, and a common nordic surname.
- datacheck.eth - unregistered, self-explanatory two word domain.
- cooperstown.eth - premium, high search volume, baseball hall of fame city, worldwide recognition.
- subfamily.eth - (biology, taxonomic rank)
- ordo.eth - (musical phrase)
(in this similar search, we used the following words to find unregistered domains: onyx.eth, thord.eth, checks.eth, nodes.eth, towns.eth, expats.eth, tokenise.eth, and development.eth).
🙏 Your Saving Grace
When it comes to GRACE PERIOD, the ENS power users flourish. Below are just a couple of names found using similar search that are currently on grace:
- topnodes.eth - high search volume and crypto relevance.
- bestnodes.eth - high search volume and crypto relevance.
- anlen.eth - male first name, last sold for 11 ETH.
- ony.eth - three letter domain, long term potential if looking for lengthy investment period.
- idchecker.eth - high search volume, self explanatory domain.
Two notable digits that are currently in GRACE PERIOD:
🌀 Random Spin
Similar to last week, below are some domains that are randomly chosen throughout multiple different categories based on Kodex’s similar search mechanism:
- thrush.eth - bird, etc…
- reddish.eth - color, adjective
- reforming.eth - reform present participle
- ndp.eth - net domestic product
⭐ The Star
checks.eth - which sold for 19.99 to Jack Butcher, VisualizeValue and the founder of the infamous NFT collection Checks - VV Edition. This purchase is something bigger, something more interesting than any other NFT collection buying their domain name. Jack basically took the market by storm with his unmatched creativity and marketing ability. The team clearly had a plan and executed it flawlessly to not only reward the early believers but set a new meta trend within the NFT (web3) community. It’s hard to imagine that this domain purchase was solely to gain complete control over branding and more about the possibilities of the subdomains and creative output that may come. We’re all aware at this point of how ENS not only simplifies your web3 life, gives you an identity, but also can be used to reward those within a specific community through these subdomains. It’s safe to say that there’s people watching to see what Jack does with checks.eth and will follow in his footsteps..this very well may impact the wider ENS community and the utilization of subdomains.
🎬 Conclusion
To end this, just a short thought on what may be the next big ENS category: Geographicals. Many people have had these on their radar for a long time, and it may be one of the safest plays in all of ENS from an investment standpoint. Every local city, state, and country has some sort of portal for their community members to pay taxes, update car tags, etc… The CBDC landscape will determine their market significance in due time.