Big boost for Ethereum Name Service (ENS) as Budweiser buys beer.eth

Budweiser, the self-proclaimed “King of Beers,” looks to Ethereum in a bid to go crypto. The firm behind the biggest selling beer in the U.S has just bought the beer.eth domain name, via Opensea, for 30 ETH (about $100,000).

Budweiser’s official Twitter account has also changed its profile picture to a Budweiser rocket. NFT artist Tom Sachs designed the rocket in question as part of his Rocket Factory Collection.

According to OpenSea, it was purchased on Tuesday for 8 ETH (about $24,000), having been minted just 12 days ago.

Twitter user @dGenNetwork commented on the “symbolism” behind the move. However, of greater certainty is Budweiser’s nod of approval to Ethereum, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), and NFTs.

Budweiser paid 30 ETH for Beer.eth. That’s almost $100,000. There’s some symbolism to them flexing a rocket from @tsrocketfactory. It’s happening, everyone. pic.twitter.com/LecJdLfz2L

— dGEN Network (@dGenNetwork) August 25, 2021

Taking this into account, speculators have suddenly turned their attention to the ENS in the hopes of scoring a gem for a big profit.

What is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS)?

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a distributed, open naming system running on the Ethereum blockchain.

Its purpose is to map readable names to machine-readable identifiers such as Ethereum addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata.

It also enables “reverse resolution,” so that it’s possible to associate metadata such as people’s names or interface descriptions with Ethereum addresses.

ENS operates much like Domain Name Service (DNS) on the standard World Wide Web.

The right domain name can sell for a tidy sum, which has led to speculators snapping up domain names in hopes of a big payout.

Godaddy.com has compiled a list of the top 25 most expensive domain names (publicly reported). In first place is carinsurance.com, which sold for $49.7 million. The second is insurance.com, selling for $35.6 million. And vacationrentals.com takes the third spot, at the cost of $35 million.

According to this Reddit post, recently, artist.eth sold for 10 ETH, while artcollector.eth also sold for 10 ETH. The OP claims ENS is still a relatively untapped sector, but things are changing.

OpenSea data for the last 90 days on ENS sales show an average selling price of 0.6085 ETH ($1.820) and 632.8817 ETH ($1.9 million) in volume.

Gas prices back on the rise

As a side note, despite (inaccurate) expectations of the London hard fork bringing about cheaper gas fees on Ethereum, average fees are on the rise once more.

Analysis on ycharts.com shows yesterday’s average gas fee came in at 86.80 gwei. That’s a 450% increase from July’s low of 15.8 gwei.

For those wanting better value and perhaps a better selection of available names, it’s also worth bearing in mind that other chains offer a name service. For example, Zilliqa uses .zil, and Brave incorporates .crypto.

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