$600k for an Ethereum Name? A Thriving Auction Market Is Underway

May 13, 2017 at 09:25 UTCUpdated Jul 2, 2017 at 14:08 UTC. After a shaky start this spring, a project called the Ethereum Name Service appears to be attracting serious capital.

Thousands of people are vying for a new set of ethereum names being auctioned off by the leaderless domain service, with some putting in bids for upwards of $1m. Even though bid amounts are more like deposits, what still comes as a surprise is how much people are willing to put toward more popular names.

Eth was auctioned for 101 ETH. In case you missed our launch coverage, ENS works similar to the domain name server system we know today, creating human-readable names to use in place of machine names.

Instead of pointing to websites on the internet, ethereum names point to ethereum resources, like wallets, content on its decentralized storage system Swarm, and more.

When you open an auction, you enter a single bid for the most you are willing to pay for a name.

One bug caused users to bid on the wrong version of a domain when they entered a name with mixed capital letters.

Initially, if you wanted to bid on an ethereum name, your only choice was to use the official dapp, which requires a blockchain-enabled browser, or the command line.

Johnson says, just like most users on the internet don't buy their own domain names, it's likely most ENS users won't go through the process of buying their own ethereum names either.

"I think we'll see the real take off for usage once the wallets start giving their own domain names and they can set up that system. Then anyone can claim their own payments address instantly. And suddenly, it will be possible for anyone to have a name without going through the whole auction process."

In two years, a planned upgrade will move ENS to a more permanent system, at which point, people will be able to auction for shorter names less than seven characters.