The Land Rush You Might Be Missing
When the internet was young, most people ignored domain names. amazon.com was available for years before Jeff Bezos registered it in 1994. facebook.com sat unclaimed. Hindsight makes these look obvious — but at the time, very few people understood that a domain name would become core business infrastructure.
Web3 is in the same early phase. Right now, short and meaningful .eth and .base.eth names are available for a few dollars a year. In five years, many of them will not be.
Why Early Registration Matters
Short Names Are a Finite Resource
There are only 676 two-letter .eth combinations. Around 17,576 three-letter ones. These were mostly claimed years ago by speculators and early adopters. Four and five-letter names are still accessible — but the window is narrowing as ENS adoption grows.
Name squatting is real, but the more important dynamic is organic demand: as more wallets are created, more people want a human-readable identity. Every new ENS user looking for mike.eth or dao.eth is a potential bidder for names that are already taken.
Your Name, Your Brand
In traditional web, your domain is your brand. In Web3, your .eth or .base.eth name is your on-chain identity — visible in transaction history, DeFi interfaces, NFT platforms, and social apps. Registering your real name, brand name, or memorable handle now means it is yours permanently, rather than someone else's to squat on later.
Renewals Are Cheap; Regret Is Expensive
ENS registration costs vary by name length, but a five-letter-or-longer name runs around $5/year. Basenames are similarly priced. The cost of securing a namespace early is trivial compared to the cost of trying to acquire it later on the secondary market — if it is available at all.
Subdomains Are Unlocked by Ownership
Once you own yourname.eth, you control all its subdomains: app.yourname.eth, pay.yourname.eth, team.yourname.eth. These can be assigned to addresses, IPFS content, or delegated to other wallets — for free. Owning the parent name unlocks an entire namespace tree.
What to Register
Think about what you actually need:
- Your personal name or handle — claim it before someone else does.
- Your project or company name — even if you are not building yet, protect the brand.
- Short memorable words related to your niche — these have the most secondary market value and the most utility.
- Your Twitter/X or GitHub handle — cross-platform identity consistency matters.
Base vs. ETH: Should You Register Both?
ENS (.eth) is the original and most widely recognized Web3 namespace. It runs on Ethereum mainnet and is supported across the broadest range of applications.
Basenames (.base.eth) is newer, runs on Base (Coinbase's L2), and benefits from lower gas fees and tight Coinbase ecosystem integration. If you interact with Coinbase Wallet, Coinbase dApps, or Base-native protocols, a Basename is increasingly valuable.
Registering both — especially if your chosen name is still available on both chains — is a small investment that covers all bases (pun intended).
Check Before It Is Gone
The best time to register was two years ago. The second best time is now.
Use the checker on this site to see if your preferred names are still available on ENS and Basenames. It runs entirely in your browser — no accounts, no email, no rate limits. Just paste your list and check instantly.