Ethereum Name Service has proposed activating ENSv2 without requiring existing .eth domain holders to migrate, letting them keep their current names indefinitely as long as they keep renewing. The proposal was made on Oct. 11 and is now pending approval by the ENS decentralized autonomous organization, with a vote listed as pending in the Oct. 12 governance bulletin.
Once live, ENSv2 would take over all new .eth registrations, replacing the infrastructure that's been in place since 2017. Existing holders can stay on ENSv1 if they want. Nobody's being forced to move.
What migration actually does
The choice cuts both ways, and it's worth being precise about what each path costs.
Holders who migrate to ENSv2 would permanently transfer management of their domains to the new system. There's no mechanism for returning the original tokens. During migration, an owner's existing ENSv1 token moves into a smart contract known as the Graveyard, which cannot return or transfer the tokens it receives. That's a one-way door, and the proposal doesn't dress it up as anything else.
Users who stay on ENSv1 keep access to their domains and continue renewing them through a dedicated contract that also preserves their ENSv2 reservations. So the door stays open for them.
A new registry, and more control over subdomains
ENSv2 would replace ENS's existing registry with a hierarchical structure that allows individual domains to maintain separate registries for their subdomains. In practice, that gives owners more flexibility in assigning permissions. Businesses and decentralized applications could delegate responsibility for specific names or records without giving up broader control over the domain.
That's the structural argument for the upgrade. The old registry was built for a smaller namespace and simpler ownership model.
Fees, stablecoins, and a shorter grace period
The pricing changes are real. Annual fees for names containing five or more characters would rise 60% to $8 from $5. Prices for three- and four-character names stay unchanged. ENSv2 would also introduce discounts for longer registrations, reducing annual costs by roughly 44% for users buying six or more years.
Registration and renewal payments would shift to stablecoins, including USDC and DAI, replacing ETH-denominated payments and keeping fees fixed in dollar terms.
The existing 90-day grace period would shrink to 28 days for migrated names. To offset that, ENS would extend registration expiry dates by 62 days, preserving the original deadline when names become available to others. Names remaining on ENSv1 would retain their 90-day grace period. Domains already expired beyond that window would not receive reservations in the new registry.
The transition has unresolved bits
ENS expects to temporarily suspend new registrations while developers synchronize existing records and activate the new infrastructure. That process is expected to take several hours.
The proposal includes conflicting provisions on renewals during the transition, leaving uncertainty about whether existing holders can renew names before ENSv2 becomes operational. Wallets and applications integrating ENS must update their resolution infrastructure to support the new system.
Following approval, ENS Labs would complete the final synchronization, activate ENSv2 registration and resolution, and transfer its remaining administrative permissions to the DAO. The timing of the steps after approval, along with clarification on renewal availability during the transition, remains unresolved ahead of the governance vote.
ENS has not announced a launch date for ENSv2.
