ENS Labs drops Namechain L2, brings ENSv2 to the Ethereum mainnet.

ENSv2 will be deployed exclusively on Ethereum , after the team behind Ethereum Name Service announced they would no longer be developing Namechain – a Layer 2 solution tailored specifically for their application.

“Ethereum is expanding faster than anyone predicted two years ago. In just the last year, Gas Price for ENS subscriptions have dropped 99%, coinciding with Ethereum increasing Gas Limit from 30M to 60M in 2025,” ENS co-founder Nick Johnson wrote in a blog post . “Staying L1 allows ENS to cling to the strongest possible infrastructure backing – Ethereum itself.”

This announcement comes after Vitalik Buterin recently reversed course from the rollup-centric scaling path that Capital driven Ethereum for the past few years. Earlier this week, Buterin said Ethereum's base layer is scaling faster than expected, while Layer 2 is struggling with decentralization.

Previously, in 2024, ENS Labs announced plans to launch Namechain — a rollup using ZK — to support the ENS protocol, making ETH domain registration, renewal, updates, and on-chain identity management cheaper, faster, and more accessible.

“When we started planning ENSv2 and Namechain two years ago, building our own L2 was almost an ‘unavoidable’ option. Ethereum L1 was expensive for most users at the time; gas frequently skyrocketed to the point where even basic ENS operations could cost tens of dollars,” Johnson wrote.

"But when you weigh that against the complexity and operating costs of running an L2 system yourself, the problem has completely changed," he added.

ENSv2 is an upgrade of ENS – a protocol that allows users to create human-readable address names instead of the long chain of characters/numbers used in Ethereum wallets. The new version, teased for 2024, will feature a hierarchical registry system, giving owners of ETH addresses control over subnames, along with several other improvements.