The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has officially discontinued development plans for “Namechain,” its proposed dedicated Layer 2 scaling solution. The decision, communicated by lead developers and ratified by the DAO, stems from the substantial and rapid progress made in scaling the underlying Ethereum network.
Namechain was initially envisioned as an optimistic or ZK rollup designed to drastically reduce transaction costs and increase throughput for managing ENS registrations, renewals, and subdomains, addressing perennial concerns over high L1 gas fees. However, the successful implementation of EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding) and the rapidly maturing ecosystem of general-purpose L2s have collectively lowered the effective cost floor for interacting with ENS contracts on the mainnet or via existing L2 bridges.
Core ENS contributors noted that the engineering resources required to build, secure, and maintain a proprietary Layer 2 are no longer justifiable given the diminishing scaling pressure. The utility gap that Namechain was intended to fill has shrunk significantly due to the overall maturation of Ethereum’s scaling roadmap.
ENS developers will now refocus efforts on improving the core L1 registrar contracts and enhancing cross-L2 compatibility, prioritizing the leveraging of existing scaling infrastructure rather than fragmenting liquidity and development effort onto a new chain. This move is widely interpreted as a strong endorsement of Ethereum’s decentralized and generalized scaling strategy.
Source: ENS abandons plans for Namechain L2, citing Ethereum scaling
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