OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, finally buys its own ENS domain name, opensea.eth for 99ETH, around $160K. The domain name was previously minted by someone named NFTWhales for only $10k in 2020, giving the owner a 1500% profit in 2022.
What is ENS and why is it valuable?
Ethereum Name Service or ENS is a Web3-based domain name service provider on the Ethereum blockchain. Just as how DNS exists for every website on the Web2 internet, the ENS exists for websites on Web3.
In simple words, ENS converts the machine-readable address into a decentralized human-readable name and ends with .eth instead of .com. For example, apple.eth, john.eth, etc. These addresses can be of someone’s wallet or some website in Web3.
ENS the domain name is like a brand that is the only one in the world. It is currently the most popular NFT on the OpenSea marketplace. In fact, the first two weeks of July recorded an all-time high sales in the OpenSea when the users flooded in to invest their money on .eth domain names worth millions of dollars.
The biggest news of the month was when someone bid $1M worth of USDC on amazon.eth. This was supposed to be the highest bid ever made for a domain name. Samsung.eth and Starbucks.eth was sold for 60 ETH, about $90,000.
The “paradigm.eth” was bought for $1.5M, making it the most expensive ENS domain to be sold on ETH or USD. After that, “0.00.eth” was sold for 373k USD, the second-highest sale in the world, and the highest sale of July 2022.
OpenSea buys $160K domain name
OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace on Ethereum, failed to buy its own domain name initially when ENS was introduced. Instead, someone named NFTWhales minted the opensea.eth on the Ethereum Name Service platform for only $10K in 2020.
At that time, the hype for ENS domain names wasn’t worldwide and only a few people knew about their worth of this. Later, the domain name rose to become a valuable NFT for the owner as it sold to the OpenSea team for 99 ETH, which is around $160K.
Final words
Like opensea.eth, many other companies’ ENS domains exist that are owned by different individuals. As these brands expand their businesses in the Web3 world, the value of their domain name will increase.
ENS now ranks among the best-selling NFT collections on the OpenSea market even in the bear market. All in all, we can claim that ENS is one of the highlights of 2022 as of now.