ENS's proposed upgrade would make domain migration permanent and change fees and expiry rules. Holders can stay on ENSv1, but renewal arrangements during the transition remain unclear.
On Oct. 12, the ENS DAO had not yet voted on the proposed mainnet upgrade, and no launch date had been announced. For holders considering a move to ENSv2, one feature is already clear: the transfer cannot be reversed.
Migrating a .eth name would send its existing token to a smart contract called the Graveyard. The contract cannot return or transfer it. Ethereum Name Service does not require current holders to migrate, and the transfer would happen through the ENS app. Wrapped names are expected to retain their locked permissions during the move.
ENS founder Nick Johnson presented the activation proposal to the ENS DAO on Oct. 11. An executable proposal needs at least 1 million ENS tokens to participate. It also requires a simple majority in a seven-day voting period, followed by a timelock of at least two days.
The technical plan bundles 15 DAO timelock operations into one atomic transaction. It would remove five ENSv1 controllers while retaining the ETHRenewerV1 and Graveyard contracts. Control of the BaseRegistrar would then pass to the renewal contract.
After the proposal executes, ENS Labs would run a final synchronization. ENSv2 registrations would open after that work, and name resolution would switch to the new system. The remaining administrative roles would then pass to the DAO.
After activation, ENSv2 would handle all new .eth registrations. ENSv1 would stop taking new registrations, but existing owners could keep their names there and renew them through ETHRenewerV1. They could instead transfer domain management permanently to ENSv2. Activation would set no migration deadline; a name left on ENSv1 would continue working there.
Active names, along with names still within the grace period, would be reserved in ENSv2 for their current owners. Renewing a name on ENSv1 would preserve that reservation. An expired name that had passed its grace period would not receive protected status in ENSv2, so another registrant could claim it.
The proposed registry replaces the system introduced in 2017 with a hierarchy that gives individual domains and their subdomains separate registries. A business or decentralized application could delegate control over a particular name or record without handing over authority over its wider domain.
Migration changes which system manages a name. Staying on ENSv1 preserves the existing arrangement, but does not move the domain into the new registry. The Graveyard transfer makes the choice permanent for holders who want ENSv2's structure.
ENS's official documentation sets out proposed annual fees for names with five or more characters: $8, up from $5, a 60% increase. Prices for three- and four-character names would stay unchanged. Registering a name for six or more years would cut the effective annual cost by about 44%.
Registration and renewal payments would shift from ETH to stablecoins, including USDC and DAI. Fees would be set in dollar terms; the change applies to the payment asset, not the denomination of the domain itself.
ENSv2 would allow a 28-day grace period after expiry, down from 90 days on ENSv1. For existing names migrated to ENSv2, the transition plan would add 62 days to the relevant expiry date. That adjustment preserves the corresponding point at which another person can register the name. Names left on ENSv1 would keep their existing renewal path. Names already beyond the old grace period at synchronization would have no guaranteed ENSv2 reservation.
These remain proposed terms while the DAO vote is pending. The schedule sets the annual price at $5 to $8 for names with at least five characters, leaves three- and four-character pricing unchanged, and cuts effective annual costs by about 44% for registrations of six or more years. ENSv2's proposed grace period is 28 days.
ENS expects to pause new registrations for several hours while developers synchronize existing records and activate the infrastructure. ETHRenewerV1 would let owners renew names that stay on ENSv1, but the timing and renewal arrangements during that window remain unsettled.
Wallets and applications that resolve ENS names will also need to update their infrastructure. ENS integrations must handle resolution under the new system, a different job from service-side changes such as Coinbase's support automation. Once the proposal is approved, ENS Labs would complete the final synchronization before activating ENSv2 registration and resolution. Its remaining administrative permissions would then transfer to the DAO.
A domain registry maps a human-readable name to records that applications use to locate blockchain addresses and other resources. ENSv2's proposed hierarchy would let owners assign narrower permissions at the subdomain level. The Universal Resolver would switch to resolving names through the new system.
