Thread by @twofivedev

💣MAJOR CHANGES UPCOMING💣

New characters like '$' and '-' are about to get normalized by ENS. 😲

This opens the door to whole new clubs like the @negative999club, @cashtagENS, etc.

But what does this "normalisation" that everyone is talking about even mean? 🧵

1/ "Normalisation" is a validation process that users must go through before registering a new domain.

This process is the ultimate judge of which characters are officially recognized by ENS domains.

But it does *not* mean that users cannot register them.

2/ You see, while the end user sees human-readable names, ENS actually work with hashes in the background.

For example, the hash of 'alice.eth' starts with "0x787192fc...".

3/ The only problem is that you can register very different hashes that look exactly the same to the human eye.

'alice.eth' and 'aIice.eth' look the same, but their respective hashes are different.

Why? Because the second one uses a capitalised "i" that looks like an "l".

4/ To avoid potential scams, ENS uses a normalisation process that validates your characters *before* you can register them.

For example, if you try to register something with uppercase letters, the normalisation process will automatically lowercase your domain.

5/ This is also true for characters, trying to register "]]]" for example will throw you a "not a valid domain" error when going through the normalisation process.

6/ Of course, all applications using ENS domains (marketplaces, DApps, etc.) must follow this set of rules.

Thus, even though you can technically register "[[[" directly through the ENS smart contract, you won't be able to use on DAPPs like OpenSea.

7/ While ENS has been launched in 2017, normalisation is a continuous topic.

Adding new characters, removing existing ones... These discussions have always been in the background.

8/ Yet, two months ago now, something changed.

After months of back and forth discussions, the ENS team decided to move on with a new round of normalisation.

One that would *potentially* include "$", "-", "_" and other new characters.

9/ ENS enthusiasts were quick to pick up the news, and, before you know it, the most prolific alpha hunters started to mint out these characters coupled with digits, e.g "-999", "$999" and so on.

https://twitter.com/xENSx_/status/1552481785413517312

10/ As you can imagine, it is already far too late to register these domains from these new categories.

As these new clubs get listed on traditional marketplaces once the normalisation is rolled out, in a few weeks from now, a lot of people are expecting their prices to go up.

11/ But since they were quickly registered by a small group of people, will their prices really increase?

If ENS taught us anything recently, it's that communities are also the key to ENS "clubs."

12/ While @999ENSArabic & @999ENSHindi share the same supply and are spoken by a gigantic number of people, their floor prices are completely different.

Why? Because the only thing that really differentiates these clubs is the holders behind them.

13/ Remember our Deep dive on the #999club? We saw an amazingly strong community of Diamond Hands.

Unsurprisingly, this club has been steadily increasing since this analysis and its floor price has risen by 60% in the last two months.

https://twitter.com/twofivedev/status/1546505843079790592

14/ Well the story is not different here.

We've seen an impressive ratio of 68 % diamond hands on our tools for @999ENSArabic.

On top of that, this "club" is supported by some of the biggest ENS whales in the space like @singhdotin, @FuserVI, @2l3gi72qui7, @AbdoEleish etc.

15/ This raises the question: will this be the case for these new clubs?

Who is holding them today? Will they try to dump their bags as soon as these new clubs are listed on OpenSea?

🕵️ We'll find out...

Stay tuned and 🔔 on, we'll drop our analysis in the next 24 hours.