💀The Issue with THORChain Name Service

THORNames have been available for purchase and use since 2021. Despite their flexibility and cross-chain potential, they have not yet seen widespread usage, unlike its sister protocol in ENS.

Why?

Team CoinBot believes that there is a singular, main reason why THORNames have not caught on, and we aim to remedy this with the advent of Forge.

THORNames could not be traded.

As mentioned above, a big part of why .eth domains are sought after is because of the aspect of personalization.

Not only do users get representation of themselves on the blockchain, protocols and companies are also able to represent their brands using human-readable addresses.

Speculation on who might want to use (and pay for) certain domains fueled higher prices, and brought more eyes to the market, which in turn made ENS more and more sought after as a social status item, creating a flywheel effect in the desirability and usage of ENS.

ENS domains which were short, concise and otherwise representative were hugely sought after and were worth premiums. For example, "paradigm.eth" was purchased in October 2021 for 420 ETH--approximately $1.5 million at the time.

The same applies to more traditional Web2 domains (.com, .net and etc.). CarInsurance.com is valuated at nearly $50 million at the time of writing.

In contrast, a THORName would only ever have cost 10 RUNE to register + 1 RUNE per year after that. With no way to trade them peer-to-peer, the value of THORNames were kept stable, stifling speculative market forces from bringing more eyes to THORNames.

No one buying THORNames -> No one seeing THORNames -> No one using THORNames.