Ethereum Name Service (ENS) will run its next-generation protocol, ENSv2, only on the Ethereum mainnet and has halted development of Namechain, its own layer 2 solution that it had been preparing for more than 2 years, The Block reported on Thursday.

Nick Johnson (닉 존슨), an ENS co-founder, wrote on his blog: "Ethereum is scaling much faster than we expected" and "ENS will go with Ethereum, which has the strongest infrastructure."

ENS in 2024 sought to cut costs for .eth name registrations, renewals and updates through Namechain, a proprietary layer 2 using zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup technology. It now sees improved mainnet economics as Ethereum gas fees have fallen 99 percent over the past year and the gas limit has risen to 60M from 30M as of 2025.

Johnson said: "ENS transactions previously ran to tens of dollars, but now we can secure sufficient performance without running a complex, burdensome layer 2."

The move is drawing attention as it coincides with a recent retreat by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin from a "rollup-centric" scaling strategy. Buterin said he intends to revise the scaling roadmap, citing layer 2 decentralisation limits and unexpected growth in layer 1.

ENS also plans to support a feature in ENSv2 that allows .eth addresses to be registered on various Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains.