We all know that 1st names (jake.eth)and iconic dictionary words (gold.eth) are worth a fortune But there’s more to ENS riches than that
This thread is about the names overlooked by investors now (which so are still cheap!) and yet could be worth a lot in the coming #web3
1/24 NUMBER DOMAINS
Only 1,000 3-digit domains — talk about rare! Yes, numbers may not seem like the go-to nickname today, but if ENS and web3 keep thriving, 100% chance their rarity will be appreciated.
Doubtlessly, one of the safest medium-term plays
But if you can’t afford 3-digit registrations, 4 digits are also very rare:
only 10k 4-digits exist
10k is = to most NFT collections but with Utility and built-in Staying Power on top!
2/24 DATES & RARITIES
For all number domains, including 5+ digits, rarities increase value One rarity is dates: 0000.eth to 2022.eth (historical) or 21st century (2023 to 2100) get a premium Other premium-rizing rarities are described in image:
3/24 TWO-WORDERS
If you are set on 1-worders jump to strategy 22. But if you are looking for very cheap opportunities currently ignored by investors then go for 2-worders.
Good 2-worders are the most underrated of all categories at present.
Every day I’m shocked I can still register financially super-relevant things like: cryptoyield.eth or spreadbetting.eth 
WHAT??
If web3/ENS are here to stay, don’t doubt it, people will find a utility for 2-word domains with financial/business/commercial/culture potential.
4/24 WEB3 SITES
One of those future uses could be decentralized websites. At present they’re terribly underdeveloped and clunky but that’s where the money is—in still underdeveloped things with potential
Nobody gets rich buying things that have already exploded!
5/24 DON’T NEGLECT PLURALS
Many plurals are meh — but many are golden! Especially in a coming web3 in which many more uses will be found for ENS domains as opposed to just nicknames
6/24 TRACK TRENDS
Do you have the trends bug? Then this strategy is for you—some of the best domainers have an eye for spotting (and registering!) trends
Trend-spotting is a superpower because we can run out of dic words but we can never run out of new trends
E.g. I found out that many startups are working on tokenizing physical artworks to sell each piece as fractional shares/tokens so —> I registered tokenizedart.eth
Domaining allows you to invest in emerging techs without sweating it out.
7/24 SPECIALIZE
Keeping track of all human trends is impossible. Specialization can pay off & allow you to really be the 1st to spot things in your niche
But pick a relevant, and money-making niche
EG: defi, ethereum ecosystem, cryptogaming, nft collections…
Eg. P2E is one of the next big things, and yet I could register 27 cryptogaming names that were being overlooked: gamingskins.eth gamemart.eth gamebay.eth videogamenfts.eth cryptovideogames.eth… Plus sector insiders may be interested in buying your collection in bulk.
8/24 TRIPLES & QUADS
3-letter & 4-letter domains are valuable for the same reason as numbers: rarity
E.g. only 17k 3-letters >> that’s just 1.7 times the average NFT collection but on top you get utility
All 3-letters with meaning are taken >> but many acronyms still left…
Aim for acronyms that are as relevant to crypto/nfts/finance or pop culture as possible. Inspiration: https://abbreviations.com If 3-letter domain regs too expensive, go for 4-letters 4-letters with meaning also very rare and surprisingly there are still some to register
9/24 BRANDS & CELEBS
Unlike .com domains in .eth still tons of brands/celebrities unregistered. It is legal? It is gray. We are early, and justice system is late. Plus, if you price reasonably, probably nobody will bother to sue you
Btw, this is a heated topic right now. If you want to know why (pro) squatters are NOT bad but actually healthy for ENS you can see this LINK
10/ OG Domains
OG ENS = ENS minted before CryptoPunks = before 6/23/2017 OG NFTs go for a premium and OG ENS domains may at some point get this premium too If you want exposure to them, list is here: https://dune.xyz/makoto/Old
If you’re getting OG exposure,
aim for either the youngest names…
E.g. i registered a couple of the few remaining sub-150s, and also the round number 1000th domain ever minted
or for the coolest names…
E.g.
registered this super cool OG
11/ Nominalize
Almost every noun that can be used as a nickname (goku.eth, hacker.eth, alias.eth…) has been registered
But still, you can register adjectives and nominalized verbs that you think people will like to use as their web3 ID
For adjectives favor ‘positives’ (chirpy, seductive, likable…) or ‘badasses’ (aggressive, enraged, doomy…)
For verb nominalizations avoid ‘desperates’ (hospitalized is a nominalization of hospitalize) and favor ‘cools’ (decentralizer.eth is a nominalization of decentralize)
12/ THE “THE+”
Simple strategy = add ‘the’ to anything cool
When all cool simple words like goat.eth are punk-level-expensive to buy, people will pay top dollar for the cool “the+” ones
Eg. I registered thefrog.eth and theogs.eth because frog and OGs are uber-bluechip
13/ ‘FOREIGNS’
English dominates big .com sales and will likely dominate .eth sales for years.
But… super-premium .coms like ‘insurance’ ‘cars’ ‘banking’ etc sell well in any big language and the same is extremely likely to happen with .eth names
So a good way to get exposure is to:
A) register essential words like wallet, money, transfer, address… in any big language
B) register things that are super-relevant to that specific culture like the most common first names, the most important religious words, festivals…
14/ ‘Collectionize’
Collectionizing some of your purchases is about buying thematically-related ENS’s.
It can work because if you have only one, say, cryptogaming-related domain, the likelihood that a cryptogaming insider finds you is much smaller than if you have 30. And once they find you, the likelihood that they like at least 1 of your 30 gaming domains is 30x greater than if you had only 1.
If on top of it, you also offer your entire theme-set for a UBERdiscounted price, it can be tempting for them to buy them all because… remember?
15/ SUBDOMAINS
Unlike .com’s you can also sell subdomains of your .eth’s
Eg. if you own smith.eth you can sell mark.smith.eth, meghan.smith… while keeping ownership of the root
So as new entrants find that all the good root names are taken, many expect that they’ll buy subs
If you want exposure to ‘subs’, go for:
A) relatively-common surnames
B) things that could make sense for a web3 service to use to then resell/gift subdomains to their service users like:
wallet.eth, wlt.eth, mywallet.eth, address.eth, myaddress.eth, send.eth, send247.eth…
16/ Emojis & Graphicals
ENS investors either love or hate ethmojis But I’m bullish on them because:
- emojis are MASSIVE in our culture
- people tend to copy and paste addresses/domains the 1st time they use them for money-transfers because it’d be too risky not to so 2) defeats the main anti-ethmoji objection (i.e. you can’t input them safely with keyboards)
If you want exposure, triple and quad pure emojis are the grails of their category, but are all registered now.
So if you can’t afford them secondary-market you can…
get combos with VERY iconic meanings
get hybrids with VERY iconic meanings
get 3- and 4-pures of other graphical
Some caution: at present ethmojis are in a lull after becoming for a while the top selling ENS category. But in the NFT world these things are often cyclical.
17/ CURIOS
Curios are domains worth collecting beyond utility ENS] aren’t just utility items—they’re also NFTs, and as such, they’re easy to collect/buy/sell And in NFT land, anything that can be collected ends up being collected and so ‘curiosity’ ENS domains have upside
f you want exposure—browse the trillion libraries of Unicode characters for inspiration—but aim only for the top special/catchy Eg.
tipped me that we can register upsidedown characters in ENS—so I went and registered the most iconic upsidedown name I could get:
18/ COPYCATTING
Copycatting successful sales can work sometimes. For example — following Zuckerberg’s Meta announcement many managed to sell meta-related names.
Eg. I sold metasneakers.eth for 1 eth and many more made similar sales
But don’t put all your chips on copycatting—you never know for sure when a trend is going to catch Eg. After
bought thewhitehouse.eth for 27 eth, I put thecapitol.eth up for sale for 5 eth and yet nobody ever made even one single low-ball offer
19/ LEVERAGE DNS
DNS is the traditional domaining system (.com .io .net…) DNS flippers have been doing it for decades so there’s a wealth of knowledge there It’s ironic how completely ENS investors ignore DNS (almost as much as the DNS OGs ignore us). But if you keep an eye on both worlds you can get useful registration ideas & edge Top DNS info:
http://namebio.com for past sales
http://dnjournal.com for recent sales & news
http://namepros.com where OG domainers hang out
Not everything that sells well in DNS, but many things will.
Also, if you’re registering a good brandable term in ENS, it could pay off to register .io equivalent & offer them bundled.
Crypto startups love .io’s E.g. when I registered ENSmarketplace.eth I also registered the .io
20/ BRANDABLES
Speaking of DNS, ‘brandables’ are made up words that sound great for a brand. DNS domainers even have specific sites to buy and sell them like http://brandbucket.com
We’re early in ENS, but as the existing dictionary words and existing brands start to trade too high, we’ll see more brandable sell as alternatives
If you want exposure aim for the best only: short, easy to spell & pronounce, easy on the eye, can fit many different businesses… Just a couple of examples of web3-friendly brandables are:
21/ Geographicals
Another DNS-inspired strategy — buying names of cities. It’s crazy how there are still quite sizable cities that haven’t even been registered in ENS It’s true that we haven’t yet had a cities/countries bull run in ENS, but the opportunity cost is favorable for getting exposure to them.
Perhaps they will never be as prized in web3 as they are in web2 because of the de-localized nature of web3. But in the worst-case scenario they’ll make highly iconic ENS collectibles.
22/ SCALPING OBSCURES
‘Obscures’ are… well, bad dictionary words. If you were late to the dictionary word party and you still are set on getting into that game, the way to go is—VOLUME.
At present all the dictionary words that remain to be registered are ‘obscures’, so individually they won’t make you rich, but if you sell many cheap ones you can make great money. It’s the Discount-Supermarket Technique.
But not all ‘Obscures’ are as good (or as bad) try to favor:
23/ THINK FUTURE
This strategy overarches most of the previous ones but is worth stressing: spend brain-time in the future
The 2 skills that make great domainers are:
- Patience
- Ability to spot trends
If you can think ahead, that helps you to not follow the herd and to buy/register things before the herd realizes they have value
There are many good names that aren’t taken because 99% of buyers obsess only with what’s selling right this minute
But if you want to buy cheap (bottom) and sell expensive (top)—Think Future.
24/ LIQUIDATE
No, I’m not ending by saying that you should give up and liquidate it all lol
But why not offer your entire collection for a super discounted price at the same time that you sell your names individually?
You can announce this price at the top of your Twitter or OS
An NFT whale trying to get a quick ‘in’ on ENS or an existing ENS whale wanting rapid expansion may want them. But, for it to work it needs to be an UBER discounted price. That way, the discount makes up for the portion of your domains they don’t like.
I hope this was useful!
If you want the insane-long video version of this insane-long thread (and you love the melodious sound of broken English), you can watch it here: