Should a crypto project use an ENS name or a DNS domain?

What does an ENS name protect?

An ENS name protects the link between a human-readable name and onchain data, such as an address. The ENS documentation describes names like vitalik.eth standing in for long hexadecimal addresses, with a resolver holding the records, and it lists avatars, subnames and the .eth registrar among the uses.

Ownership is simple to reason about. The ENS registrar documentation states that names are NFTs and can be transferred like any ERC-721 token, so the wallet that holds the token controls the name. A project that holds its .eth name in a multisig has no registrar account to be phished, and no support desk to be talked into a transfer.

Resolution is onchain. The ENS documentation describes a Universal Resolver that a client calls once; the resolver finds the right record, follows wildcard and gateway rules where needed, and returns it. That makes ENS strong for payment addresses and for identity inside wallets and apps that support it, and gives it no role for a user who types a project name into a search bar.

Why does phishing happen on DNS names and not on ENS names?

Phishing follows the audience, and the audience lives in browsers, search results and chat links. Anyone can register a DNS look-alike in minutes, and a link in a chat message hides which naming system sits behind it.

Interisle's phishing landscape report, released on 9 September 2025 and covering May 2024 to April 2025, found that 77% of phishing domains were registered maliciously by criminals and that more than 1.5 million domain names were used in phishing, the highest ever recorded. Its TLD data for 1 May 2025 to 30 April 2026 counts 869,180 phishing domains under .com, 93,987 under .xyz and 79,625 under .shop. Those are DNS counts: the attackers use the name system with the largest audience.

The lesson for a project is practical. An ENS name does not remove the need to own the DNS names around your brand, because a user who is lured to a look-alike never consults ENS. The kinds of variant phishers register are listed in what kinds of look-alike domains phishers register.

Can a DNS domain also be an ENS name?

Yes: ENS can import a DNS name, and DNSSEC is mandatory for it. The ENS documentation gives two routes. The onchain route requires DNSSEC on the domain, a TXT record at _ens in the form a=<eth-address>; and a DNSSEC proof submitted to the DNSRegistrar contract, which has no ENS protocol fee but can cost up to a few million gas. The gasless route adds a TXT record at the root of the domain in the form ENS1 followed by a resolver address, and the proof is fetched offchain and verified at query time.

The documentation states that all ENS-enabled DNS names must use DNSSEC and that not every top-level domain supports it. Two consequences follow. A project that imports its .com into ENS turns its DNS registrar account into part of its ENS security, so that account deserves the same care as a wallet. And signing the zone is useful on its own, as covered in how to enable DNSSEC on your domain.

A sample record for the gasless route, with a placeholder resolver address:

How should a project hold both?

Hold the ENS name in a multisig, hold the DNS names at a registrar account protected like a treasury, and point both to the same official links. A workable split:

• ENS: register the .eth name of your project, keep it in the same multisig that signs for the protocol, and set the records that wallets read. Put a renewal date in the calendar: after expiry and the 90-day grace period, the documentation says the name enters a premium auction of 21 days.
• DNS, main domain: the name users trust, protected as described in how to secure your domain against DNS hijacking.
• DNS, defensive names: your own name on the extensions phishers use, with forwarding to the main site and the no-email template on every unused name. The choice of extensions is in which domains a crypto project should register.

Wardmint sells DNS registrations only. It does not sell .eth names and does not run monitoring or takedown; its place in the plan is the defensive names, paid in BTC, USDT, USDC, ETH, SOL, LTC from a prepaid balance with a $25 minimum top-up, with one verified email per domain and no identity documents. It registers a project's own variants for that project, never look-alikes of another brand.

How much does the DNS side cost next to ENS?

According to Wardmint's survey of 12 November 2026, a .com costs $12.49 at Wardmint, 37% under Namecheap's regular renewal price of $19.98, and the core set of six extensions (.com, .net, .org, .io, .xyz, .app) costs $128.94 a year. We do not claim to be the cheapest. For comparison, ENS lists 5 USD a year for a .eth name of five letters or more, and the DNS set protects the part of the brand that attackers copy most.

A citable summary: an ENS name secures what a wallet resolves, a DNS domain secures what a person types, and a crypto project that owns only one of them leaves the other to be registered by someone else.