ENSv2 Activation Needs One DAO Vote And 15 Calls In One Transaction

The ENS DAO now has an executable proposal on its forum that would move the name service to its second version. Nick.eth posted the ENSv2 activation plan on October 11, and it carries an onchain draft label. Token holders get one vote. After that, one transaction does the rest.

What the ENSv2 activation would change

The post breaks the switch into five stages. Only the second needs a vote. ENS Labs has already put the v2 contracts on mainnet and reserved every live .eth name on v2 for whoever owns it today. Names in their grace period got the same treatment.

If holders vote yes, the DAO's timelock fires off 15 calls in a row. Among them, .eth gets pointed at the v2 resolver and the old controllers lose their rights on the v1 registrar. New v1 names stop right there. Ownership of that registrar then passes to a contract that can only renew names.

Labs takes it from there once the ENSv2 activation executes. It runs a final sync, opens registration on the v2 registrar and moves resolution over. Last, it gives the DAO timelock every admin role it holds on v2 and drops its own.

What name owners need to do

Owners can sit tight for now. Your .eth name keeps resolving, and renewals work the way they do now. A renewal also pushes out the reservation on v2, and moving across is something owners can do in the ENS app whenever they like.

Expiry dates do not change. Version 2 has a 28-day grace period against 90 days on v1. Each migrated name therefore gets 62 extra days on its v2 expiry. Names that had already lapsed past grace are left behind and can be registered fresh on v2.

Checking the ENSv2 activation against the chain

Calls 7 to 11 are meant to remove every controller that is live on the v1 registrar. Querying the registrar on Ethereum mainnet turns up five live controllers, and each one answers true. They are the ETH registrar controller, the NameWrapper, the 2020 migration contract, a legacy Safe and the original 2020 controller.

The wrapped registrar controller that came before them returns false. The post says it is already disabled, so that line holds up. The registrar's owner is the RegistrarSecurityController, which is the contract the controller changes run through.

Two new contracts, the Graveyard and ETHRenewerV1, already sit on mainnet with code in them. Neither has controller rights yet. Calls 12 and 13 hand them those rights. Call 14 then gives the renewer ownership of the registrar. Order is the catch here, since the old owner can't touch controllers once ownership has moved.

The ENS forum post has the full table of calls, each with its contract, its function and its purpose.

Risks in the ENSv2 activation

The ENSv2 activation has a short blind spot. For a few hours between the vote executing and v2 going live, nobody can register a name on either version. Renewing a v1 name is paused too. The post expects that gap to be short.

The v1 freeze can be undone by another executable proposal until stage 4. A migrated name is different. Its v1 token goes to the Graveyard, and that contract has no way to send it back.

One shortcut disappears as well. Today an emergency key can shut off a registrar controller without any vote. That power ends with the handover.

The label says draft, so some wording may still move. Holders should read the live thread before voting.