First published 9 November 2021, the day after the token claim opened. Expanded in October 2026 so a name is not described as the token, and so the claim is not described as still open. The Ethereum Name Service maps human-readable names to addresses. It opened in 2017, from True Names Ltd. Nick Johnson is the person most associated with that work. You pay ETH to register a .eth name for a term of years. When the term ends, someone else can register it. The ENS token does not pay that rent and does not extend it. A name is not a trademark, and it is not the website it points at. Ethereum without the jargon is the chain. ETH pays the fee. ENS does not.
The token launched on 8 November 2021. One hundred million were minted. A quarter was allocated to addresses that had been the registrant of a .eth name, based on a snapshot at the end of 31 October 2021. Doing something with a name after that snapshot did not change the allocation. A quarter went to contributors, on locks of four years. Half went to a DAO treasury, a tenth of that half available at once and the rest unlocking over the same four years. Those clocks have finished. An unlock was coins that already existed. The claim window closed on 4 May 2022. Unclaimed tokens were sent to the treasury. The project’s own support page says there is no current claim. A site that says claim ENS, and asks for a recovery phrase, is not the 2021 window. A wallet signature is not a handshake.
Holding the token lets you delegate a vote on the registrar and on how the treasury is spent. A vote is not a renewal of your name, and it is not a share of the fees in your pocket unless a proposal says so and passes. Setting a primary name points an address at a name. It does not mint ENS. A name you rent and a token you hold are two entries in the same wallet. Sending one does not send the other.
The wrong network is still the wrong city. A .eth name does not make an address on another chain safe, and ENS on a bridge is a different token until you are looking at the contract the DAO minted. Nothing here is an instruction to register a name, to vote, or to buy ENS.
