ENS has ceased development of the L2 Namechain. The v2 version will be directly deployed on the Ethereum mainnet.

Foresight News reports that ENS founder nick.eth announced that ENSv2 will be deployed directly on the Ethereum mainnet and the development of its proprietary Layer 2 network Namechain will be halted. The decision was driven by the faster-than-expected expansion of Ethereum L1, and after the Fusaka upgrade in 2025 increased the Gas limit to 60 million, ENS registration Gas costs have decreased by 99% over the past year, with the average registration fee dropping below $0.05. nick.eth stated that although development of Namechain has stopped, the roadmap for ENSv2 remains unchanged, and users will still experience features such as single-step registration, support for cross-chain stablecoin payments, and a brand-new registry design. The ENS team believes that staying on L1 can eliminate the additional trust assumptions brought by L2 and leverage Ethereum’s strongest infrastructure guarantees. Currently, the new ENS App and ENS Explorer have opened public Alpha testing.