On Tuesday, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, domain Amazon.eth received an offer for 1 million USDC (a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar) from an anonymous wallet address on OpenSea. The offer to buy the ENS domain went unanswered however, and no transaction took place. This is despite the last sale of the domain name being five months ago for 33 Ether (worth around $100,000 at that time).
The expired million-dollar offer for Amazon.eth on OpenSea | Source: OpenSea
It is unclear at the time of publication whether the owner simply was not informed of the offer, or did not consider it to be near fair value, or if the bidding and domain owner accounts were linked in an attempt to boost the price of the asset (in what is known as a “wash trade”). According to data from Opense, other bid offers for the ENS domain stand at just around $6,200 USDC. The domain name is verified as official by ENS and is owned by anonymous OpenSea user 4761BF.
The expired million-dollar offer for Amazon.eth on OpenSea | Source: OpenSea
ENS is a blockchain naming protocol that allows users to store avatars and profile images for use across devices and send or receive crypto and nonfungible tokens. To sell a .eth domain on OpenSea, users would first need to connect their wallet and register an address at manager.ens.domains then list it on their OpenSea account.
While many crypto enthusiasts took up interesting or creative names for the ENS service, others have embarked on the practice of domain-flipping. That is, registering ENS domains containing names of prominent entities beforehand and then later demanding a high price for the domain should the said entity wishes to enter the Web 3.0 space later on.
Since its inception in 2017, there have been over 1.67 million .eth domain registrations across approximately 482,000 owners. More than 154,100 registrations were made recentl between July 5 to July 18, partly due to lower gas fees and continued interest from entities seeking to enter the Web 3.0 space. To date, the ENS collection on OpenSea has witnessed approximately 46,200 ETH ($71.5 million) in cumulative transaction volume.