Why ENS Staying on Ethereum Mainnet Is the Right Call

The Big Announcement

Last week, ENS Labs dropped some unexpected news that sent ripples through the Web3 community. The Ethereum Name Service is canceling Namechain, (their planned Layer 2 rollup), and deploying ENSv2 exclusively on Ethereum’s mainnet.

Wait, weren’t L2s supposed to be the future? Why would ENS, one of Ethereum’s most important infrastructure projects, decide to stay on Layer 1?

The answer is surprisingly simple: Ethereum scaled faster than anyone expected.

https://x.com/ensdomains/status/2019789111557808146

The Numbers Tell the Story

Two years ago, when ENS Labs began planning Namechain, L1 gas prices were brutal. Registering an ENS name could cost $20 or more in gas during peak periods. The math seemed obvious; build your own L2, give users affordable transactions.

But here’s what changed:

• Gas costs dropped 99% over the past year
• Ethereum’s gas limit went from 30M to 60M in 2025
• ENS registration now costs less than 5 cents in gas on average
• Developers are targeting 200M gas limit in 2026

To put this in perspective: if ENS Labs subsidized every single ENS transaction from 2025 at current gas prices, it would cost roughly $10,000. Running their own L2 would cost substantially more than that.

The economics flipped entirely.

What This Means for ENS Users

Here’s the good news: everything that made ENSv2 exciting is still happening. You’re still getting:

Single-step registration: No more waiting for two transactions. The new ENS App (currently in alpha) streamlines the entire process.

Pay with any asset, from any chain: Want to register a name using USDC on Base? You’ll be able to do that without manually bridging funds.

New registry architecture: Each name gets its own registry, enabling more flexible ownership models and better handling of name expiration.

Better resolution: Here’s a subtle but important benefit: with everything on L1, resolving names is simpler. You’re querying one chain instead of two. That means faster lookups and fewer points of failure.

https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/2019818956530274327

The Trust Trade-Off

This is where things get interesting from a principles standpoint.

ENS has always stood for decentralization and user sovereignty. When you own an ENS name, you actually own it, no company can take it from you, no government can censor it.

Any Layer 2, no matter how well-designed, introduces additional trust assumptions. There’s the rollup contracts that need upgradeability. There’s block production that might involve a centralized set of preconfers. These aren’t dealbreakers, but they’re real trade-offs.

Nick Johnson put it well in his announcement: “Ethereum L1 offers something no L2 can fully replicate: the same security, decentralization, and liveness guarantees that have made Ethereum the foundation of onchain finance and much more.”

By staying on L1, ENS gets the strongest possible security guarantees. Period.

The Concorde Lesson

Nick included a fascinating analogy in his announcement that I think is worth highlighting.

When Britain and France started developing Concorde in 1960, supersonic passenger flight seemed inevitable. Jet travel was exploding, and cutting transatlantic flight time from 8 hours to 3.5 hours seemed like obvious progress.

But the world changed. Subsonic flights got more efficient. Overland supersonic flight got banned. Fuel prices spiked. By the time Concorde entered service, the advantages had eroded while the costs hadn’t. The project never turned a profit.

The lesson isn’t that ambitious engineering is bad. The lesson is that recognizing when circumstances have changed, (and having the courage to adapt), is a form of leadership.

ENS Labs invested heavily in Namechain. They built partnerships, did technical development, communicated plans to the community. Changing direction has real costs. But they asked themselves honestly: “If we were starting today, knowing what we know about Ethereum’s scaling, would we build our own L2?”

The answer was clearly no.

What About L2s in General?

This decision doesn’t mean ENS is anti-L2. The ENSv2 architecture actually makes L2 names more interoperable. ENS still supports resolution for 60+ different blockchains, including Bitcoin, Solana, Celo, and various L2s.

What it means is that the core ENS registry, the source of truth for name ownership, stays on the most decentralized, battle-tested infrastructure available.

Think of it this way: you might use an L2 for day-to-day transactions, but your ENS name’s ownership is secured by Ethereum itself.

The Bigger Picture

This decision reflects a broader shift happening across Ethereum. The “everything must move to L2s” narrative from 2023-2024 is maturing into something more nuanced.

L2s are great for high-frequency transactions, gaming, and applications that need cheap throughput. But for critical infrastructure, (identity, naming, certain types of DeFi), the security guarantees of L1 matter.

Ethereum’s scaling roadmap (Fusaka, ZK upgrades, continued gas limit increases) is making L1 viable for more use cases than we thought possible two years ago.

What Happens Next

The ENS App and ENS Explorer are both in public alpha right now. If you haven’t tried them, go to app.ens.dev and explorer.ens.dev.

ENSv2 will continue development, just without the Namechain component. The timeline for full deployment hasn’t been announced, but expect continued refinement based on community feedback from the alpha.

For existing ENS name holders: nothing changes right now. Your names are safe, your ownership is secure. When ENSv2 launches, there will be an upgrade path that ENS Labs has promised will be “clearer and simpler than before.”

https://x.com/Jefflau/status/2019948527997317475

My Take as an ENS Delegate

Full disclosure: I’m an ENS delegate, which means I participate in governance decisions for the protocol. But this decision came from ENS Labs (the development team), not the DAO.

That said, I think this is the right call.

The Web3 space has a tendency toward complexity for complexity’s sake. We sometimes add layers, bridges, and protocols because they seem innovative, not because they’re necessary.

ENS choosing L1 simplicity over L2 complexity, (when they had already invested significantly in the L2 path), shows mature engineering judgment. They’re optimizing for user experience and security, not for having the shiniest tech stack.

That’s the kind of decision-making that builds lasting infrastructure.

Key Takeaways

1. ENSv2 is still happening: All the user experience improvements are still coming
2. Gas costs aren’t a problem anymore: 99% reduction makes L1 viable
3. Security benefits: No L2 can match L1’s guarantees
4. Simpler architecture: One chain to query, fewer failure modes
5. Adaptation is strength: Changing course when circumstances change is good leadership

What do you think about ENS staying on Ethereum? Let me know in the comments or reach out on X @GaryPalmerJr.