ICANN spent the summer wrestling with a question it had avoided for years: can a blockchain naming system share a name with the actual Domain Name System that runs the internet, and should the organization let that happen? A draft answer landed on August 10, opened for public comment the next day, right as ICANN’s application window for new top-level domains closed on August 12. It’s the first such window since 2012, and the timing wasn’t a coincidence. Several Web3 naming projects have operated their own address systems outside the DNS for years, and this round is where some of them are trying to come inside.
The Technical Study Group’s conclusion turned out more permissive than a lot of early coverage suggested. Integration is possible, the group found, but only under a strict condition: the exact same string of characters has to stay under the exact same party’s control in both systems simultaneously.
Every name has to at least be a candidate in the DNS. Suspensions have to apply across both systems at once. And the report flags a genuine gap, too. Where a name exists only in the alternative system with no registrant contact info on file, nobody’s quite sure how existing dispute and takedown policies would even function.
That rule is fairly easy for a brand launching fresh. It’s brutal for an established Web3 registry that’s already sold thousands of names to pseudonymous holders, since every one of those names would need a matching DNS reservation tied to the same owner.
Ethereum Name Service picked the more practical route instead. On August 11, ENS tokenholders approved turning the project’s foundation into a fully operational body, on-chain, specifically so it could apply to ICANN at all. Rather than trying to reconcile its existing .eth namespace, ENS is going after .ens as a closed brand domain. The .eth string was never eligible anyway. It’s Ethiopia’s ISO country code, which ICANN treats as off-limits for generic use.
The earliest any of these new strings could actually go live is 2028. ICANN‘s message, in effect, is that the door is open, just narrow enough that walking through it takes years and a fair amount of restructuring first.
