ENS Labs scraps Namechain L2, shifts ENSv2 fully to Ethereum mainnet

ENSv2 will be deployed exclusively on Ethereum, as the team behind the Ethereum Name Service announces it will no longer be developing its app-specific Namechain Layer 2. 

“Ethereum is scaling faster than almost anyone predicted two years ago; we've seen a 99% reduction in ENS registration gas costs over the past year, coinciding with Ethereum's gas limit increases from 30M to 60M in 2025,” ENS co-founder Nick Johnson wrote in a blog post on Friday. “By staying on L1, we're aligning ENS with the strongest possible infrastructure guarantees, Ethereum itself.”

The announcement comes in the wake of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin’s reversal on the “rollup-centric” roadmap that had dominated Ethereum scaling efforts for the past several years. Earlier this week, Buterin said that the Ethereum base layer is scaling faster than envisioned, while Layer 2s have struggled to decentralize. 

ENS Labs announced in 2024 that it would roll out a ZK-powered rollup called Namechain to support the ENS protocol to make .eth name registrations, renewals, updates, and onchain identity management cheaper, faster, and more accessible. 

“When we started planning ENSv2 and Namechain two years ago, the decision to build our own L2 felt inevitable. Ethereum L1 was prohibitively expensive for most users, with gas prices regularly spiking to levels that made even basic ENS transactions cost tens of dollars,” Johnson wrote. 

“When we compare this to the complexity and operational overhead of running our own L2, the calculus has fundamentally shifted,” Johnson added. 

ENSv2 is an update to the popular ENS protocol, which allows users to create human-readable address names for their distinct alphanumeric Ethereum blockchain addresses.

The updated protocol, previewed in 2024, will feature hierarchical registries that give .eth address owners control over subnames, as well as other improvements. 

L2 learnings

ENS Labs COO Katherine Wu noted that L2 interoperability will continue as a priority for the ENSv2 update, with the team building the capability for .eth names to be registered “regardless of which EVM chain they are on.”

“We've invested significantly in Namechain—in partnerships, in technical development, in communicating our plans to the community. Many people think of ENSv2 and Namechain as synonymous,” Johnson said. “That doesn't mean the work on Namechain was wasted; we're implementing our learnings about L2 architecture to make ENS more interoperable with different L2s and importantly, make it simpler for end users.”