The most expensive ENS domain ever sold was Paradigm.eth, when it sold for 420 ETH ($1,488,480) on October 9th, 2021.

And nearly 1 year after that record sale, ENS domain registration and sales activity have gained even more traction. 

ENS, short for Ethereum Name Service, is a decentralized naming service that connects human-readable text to Ethereum addresses, content hashes, metadata, etc. making it easier and faster to transact information to and from the right users on the blockchain.

Many are comparing ENS domains to the early days of website domain buying before the value of the internet was fully understood. 

All of the websites we visit today are actually found by a unique IP (internet protocol) address, which is a string of six numbers broken up by periods: 168.212. 226.204

But it is absolutely no fun to surf the internet by writing down and typing in long IP addresses to get to your favorite websites, so a domain name system was introduced so that you could type in Nike.com, which is mapped to the IP address and thus calls the right information for the contents of that site. 

There’s a reason the CarInsurance.com domain sold for $49.7 million, it takes on a brand of itself. It’s memorable, convenient, and powerful digital real estate to attract the right users looking for a specific topic of information. 

Like domain name service, ENS solves a big problem: the ability to transact information between parties with human-readable names and create value through branded digital real estate. 

The full potential of ENS domains and their capabilities is not yet fully tapped, but it will be fun to see the infrastructure evolve. 

As I always mention, this is not financial advice, I am not a financial advisor and the contents of this article shouldn’t be misconstrued as such. 

10 most expensive ENS domain names sold on OpenSea 

Here are the 10 most expensive ENS domains sold on OpenSea, with the USD value of the transaction at the time of the sale. 

1 — Paradigm.eth — $1,488,480

2 — 000.eth — $321,885 

3 — deepak.eth — $224,788

4 — porno.eth — $202,162 

5 — 555.eth — $162,975

6 — opensea.eth — $162,938

7 — ❤‍🔥.eth — $159,772

8 — stop-doing-fake-bids-its-honestly-lame-my-guy.eth — $156,973

9 — 005.eth — $137,364

10 — 000.eth — $113,196

Note that the sales on this list occurred on OpenSea and USD amounts at the time of sale were verified using Etherscan.io. Also, note that the 10th most expensive ETH domain was bought displaying the Eastern Arabic numeral representing 0, but it was difficult to get it to display properly on the blog.

It is possible that some of these sales were “wash” sales (something I am unable to verify unless that information is public). 

The 8th most expensive ENS domain on this list, stop-doing-fake-bids-its-honestly-lame-my-guy.eth, on this list was accidentally sold for 100 wETH (wrapped ETH) because the original domain owner sold the name without realizing he still had a 100 ETH bid on his own name: 

Source: Twitter

How can you check the value of an ENS domain? 

Step 1 - Navigate to Opensea.io in your web browser 

Step 2 - Type ens in the search bar and click on ENS: Ethereum Name Service, which has been verified by OpenSea with a blue check mark

Step 3 - In the search by name or attribute field type in any ENS domain name you want to see the value of. If it has sold or has active bids, you’ll be able to see all of that information in the OpenSea interface. 

Alternatively, if you want to look at the most expensive ENS domains ever sold on OpenSea, change the filter directly next to the search by name or attribute field from Price: Low to High to Highest last sale 

This will display the highest ENS domain sales in ETH and you can follow these 3 steps to see what it sold for in USD at the time of the sale. 

Closing Thoughts

There is such a clear parallel between traditional domain name buying/selling and ENS domain name buying/selling, but the magnitude of the application is a bit less clear. 

The average internet user visits more than 130 web pages per day but your average internet user has probably never even heard of ENS domains, let alone used one. 

In some ways, this is a good thing because it’s “early” and you can acquire ENS domains (or register them) very affordably, but in some ways, it could be too early to tell if they would be used by the average internet user on a daily basis. 

If blockchain technology is truly the disruptor some say it is, and brands/influencers /niche bloggers/collectors, etc. are able to see value in using them, the early bets could pay off for the right names. 

As we see more record sales of ENS domain names, we will continue to add them to this list.