There are only 999 three-digit Ethereum Name Services domains available. While all have sold out and have high market resale value, investors can now own a piece of the highly coveted three-digit club as fractional shares.
What Happened: Debuting on alternative investing site Rally on Friday, July 15 at 12 p.m. ET is the 105.eth ENS domain.
Rally acquired the asset thanks to having a lot of crypto-native employees that saw a trend of three-digit addresses.
“They’re so good at putting together their learnings in the most articulate, easy-to-follow ways,” Rally co-founder and Chief Product Officer Rob Petrozzo told Benzinga. “We’ve had a lot of great people here like Rory Tait and Will Stern.”
Petrozzo said he came from the generation that wanted to buy dot-com names as digital real estate that could be registered for $8. ENS domains are similar in nature.
“This is the biggest generational shift.”
Petrozzo sees ENS domains being used for consumer-to-consumer transactions.
“It’s easy to understand now from dot-com boom how this boom could happen.”
The Asset: Rally is listing 105.eth with an initial value of $40,000. The company will sell 10,000 shares at $4 each.
Petrozzo said the pricing is in line with comparable assets in a quick-moving industry.
“There’s certainly a type of energy around three-digit and three-character domains,” Petrozzo said.
There are only 999 three-digit ENS domains ever available. The cheapest listed asset on OpenSea is currently 28.5 Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), or around $32,465.
Petrozzo said when they priced the asset initially Ethereum was trading higher. To offset the falling price of ETH, the value of three-digit domain sales has increased, putting value in line with original estimates.
Along with being used as a person’s identity or Web3 address, Petrozzo said people covet three-digit domains due to scarcity and also to match up to area codes, businesses and the number of individual NFTs.
“You want to own 105.ETH if you own Bored Ape #105.”
Petrozzo added that the asset has spurred a lot of conversations at Rally about adding additional domains for the Web3 space to the platform.
“There’s a community. There’s staying power. There’s utility around those domains.”
Rally references a quote from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin in the asset listing, referencing a tweet from Buterin mentioning ENS.
“Three and four-letter ENS names: they’re a fixed-supply asset *and* you can do things with them!” Buterin tweeted.
Related Link: Exclusive: Elon Musk Signed $1 Bill: How You Can Own A Piece Of This Asset For $2 A Share
ENS Sales Rising: The asset launch on Rally comes as sales volume for ENS domains has risen for resold assets along with strong growth in registrations.
ENS registrations were up 216% in the last week, according to a report from Decrypt. Registrations hit more than 108,000 last week with 64,000 .eth names registered on Sunday and Monday.
Ethereum Name Services ranked sixth in NFT sales volume for the last week (Monday through Sunday) with sales of $6.0 million, according to Benzinga’s weekly top 10 ranking article.
Some highly coveted domains have seen strong sales with 000.eth sold for over $340,000.
Other top sales noted by the ENS Sales Bot on Twitter are:
Nike.eth: 60 ETH
Samsung.eth: 60 ETH
Starbucks.eth: 50 ETH
Coke.eth: 40 ETH
Cannabis.eth: $20,000
Motorola.eth: 9 ETH
Abercrombie.eth: 9 ETH
Burgerking.eth: 8 ETH
Rally and NFTs: Rally offered its first asset in the NFT sector in September 2021 with an NFT from the CryptoPunks collection.
Since then, Rally has added NFTs from popular collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Meebits, Doodles, Cool Cats, World of Women and more.
Petrozzo said Rally is looking for NFTs that are “more than an image” and have the potential to interact with community. Rally also wants projects that have staying power.
“We’re always looking for more assets like that,” Petrozzo said.
Rally added an NFT from The Currency, a project from Damien Hirst. Holders of shares on Rally got to decide if the NFT would be burned for a physical art piece, which Petrozzo said was voted yes by a strong majority.
Find out more about Rally's NFT offerings here.
