ENS NFT Trading Volume up 334% in 24 hours as a new clique forms
Investors and speculative NFT enthusiasts are going crazy over a newly released batch of 10,000 ENS domain NFTs. Numbered from 0000 until 9999 the NFT collection appreciated in value and spawned its own community.
Over the last two days, an explosion of people registering and purchasing newly released four-digit Ethereum Name Service (ENS) web domains has caused a significant spike in trading volume. In the last 48 hours, more than 28,000 ENS names registered to push ENS NFT trading volume up 334% to $3.16m at writing.
Summary
- 10,000 four-digit ENS names sold out in 6 hours for $200 each
- They are now trading on secondary markets for more than $1,500
- A new clique formed around the four-digit collection of 10,000 ENS NFTs
- 10k Club on Discord already has 3.2k members
ENS NFT Trading Volume up 334% in 24 hours
In the last 24 hours, the number of traders purchasing ENS domains swelled more than 183% to almost 9,000, while sales jumped 198% to 22,153. This means that each trader purchased two ENS domain names as people scrambled to secure the four-digit Web3 identities.
The Dune Analytics dashboard for ENS shows us that the spike began around April 21, when registrations leaped from around 2,700 to more than 7000 by the end of April 24—jumping again to more than 17,000 at writing. Importantly we are looking at registrations only and not renewals.
Four is the magic number
Despite what De La Soul thinks, it’s four that’s the magic number, аt least for ENS anyway.
The new four-digit ENS name registrations drove the Ethereum Name Service to be one of the top 3 gas guzzlers on Ethereum. Demand to purchase .eth domains containing a unique string of four digits was so substantial that ENS was competing with OpenSea, Uniswap, and Tether in gas fees. At writing, it’s still riding high in the fourth position. Four appears to be the magic number for ENS right now.
The 10,000 four-digit ENS names cost $200 to mint and are sold out and traded on secondary markets for around $1,500. What’s happening here is that the four-digit ENS names appear to have become an NFT collection in their own right.
A new NFT clique
The first thing to understand is what drives the success of an NFT project. It’s not tokens, airdrops, or passive income. It’s culture, which isn’t exclusive to NFTs. Culture is ingrained in human nature. People want to feel like they are a part of something special the world over. Without creating that feeling, any NFT project is a nonstarter. In the early days of BAYC, Apes raided Clubhouse chats, Discord activity was rampant, and they were super active on Twitter.
Moreover, a community is more than many people all holding some tokens or NFTs. It’s a group of people representing a cause or brand, potentially wearing a badge to prove it. You could even say that a proper NFT community is like a family more than a community. When the price dips, they all feel the hit. When it pumps, they all celebrate.
These days, successful NFT projects focus on building a community around a common PFP. It’s tried and tested and appears to be a winning formula. However, what we see here with four-digit ENS domains has shown something interesting. PFPs aren’t the only way to build a community. A Twitter page called 10kClub invited all the holders of four-digit ENS names to join an exclusive Discord. Which already counts 3,273 members at writing. A simple move that has planted the seeds of a community. It will be fascinating to see how this group develops and if it grows further.
Looking in the Discord chat, it’s interesting that holders are discussing subdomains and the relevance of the numbers they secured. Already wild speculation is forming around the value of certain four-digit combinations.
With 1337 gaming culture gets its nod, while 2718 refers to Leonard Euler. We can also imagine birth years or references to anniversaries or world events to gain value such as 0911.
Every NFT project should have a subdomain
Subdomains can potentially help NFT projects combine the benefits of a PFP-based collection and a name-based project and, more importantly, do away with NFT theft by the right-click save naysayers. An image can be faked. A domain cannot. Simply put, it’s not easy to find all ape PFPs on Twitter, for example, and it’s pretty much impossible to find only the real ones.
Using hashtags like #apefollowape used to work when there were only a handful of collections but has become far trickier for users over the last six months. Following a domain is arguably far easier and more efficient, and it will be interesting to observe if this trend catches on.
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The above does not constitute investment advice. The information given here is purely for informational purposes only. Please exercise due diligence and do your research. The writer holds positions in various cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, and RADAR.
