Every .eth name eventually comes back on the market. ENS registrations are term-limited — usually one year — and when an owner forgets to renew, the name moves through three predictable phases before becoming registerable again. If you know how the lifecycle works, you can pick up names that the owner walked away from for the same annual fee a fresh registration would cost.
This is the playbook for spotting them on the Expiry Explorer and acting before the auction prices them out of reach.
The three phases of ENS expiry
1. Grace period (90 days)
The moment a name's registration timestamp ticks past, it enters a 90-day grace period. The original owner can still renew at the normal annual price and keep the name. No-one else can register it during this window. From a buyer's perspective the grace period is a watchlist phase — interesting names to track, but you can't do anything yet.
The Expiry Explorer's Grace Period tab surfaces these names sorted by days remaining. This is where you build a target list.
2. Temporary premium (21 days)
Once the 90 days expire, ENS opens a 21-day dutch auction. The starting premium is $100,000,000 (yes, really) and it decays exponentially down to $0 over the full 21 days. In practice the curve flattens quickly: most names are obtainable for sub-$100 within the first 36-48 hours, and trivial names hit $0 long before the auction ends.
The total cost to register is premium + annual_fee + gas. The annual fee is length-based — 3-character names cost $640/year, 4-character names $160/year, 5+ are $5. So a 5-character common-word name at $0 premium ends up costing just gas plus $5.
The Expiry Explorer's Temp Premium tab sorts by current price (decayed value) with a "time remaining" column. The decay bar visualises how much of the auction has elapsed.
3. Reopened (after 21 days)
Once the premium hits zero, the name is open to anyone for a standard annual registration. First commit wins. Premium names rarely make it this far — most are sniped during temp premium — but plenty of long-tail names do.
What makes a name worth chasing
- Short labels. 3 and 4-letter names are inherently scarce and trade for 4-6 figures on secondary marketplaces. Catching one at base price is a windfall.
- 999 / 10k / 100k Club numerics. Curated sets of 3, 4, and 5-digit numeric names. Strong collector demand and floor prices to match.
- Dictionary words. Five and six-letter common-language nouns and verbs. Lower individual ceiling than short labels but plentiful and useful for product launches.
- Palindromes & emoji. Niche but actively collected. Look for emoji-character names and same-forward-backward strings.
- Brand match. If a name matches an existing brand or handle you control, even a 12-character name is worth catching at base price.
We grouped these into 3-letter, 4-letter, 999 Club, 10k Club, palindrome and emoji landing pages so you can browse a single category at a time.
Practical workflow
- Open /find/expiry and switch to the Grace Period tab. Skim by character length and star anything you find interesting. The favourites count in the header persists across sessions.
- Set up an alert on /manage/notifications so you get a heads-up by email, browser push, or Discord when a watched name enters temp premium. The alert lets you decide when to act rather than manually polling.
- Decide your target price before the auction starts. For a 5-letter dictionary word you might be happy at $200. For a 3-letter you might pay $5,000. Whatever the number, the decay curve halves the premium every 24 hours — so the question is "how many days do I wait?". Most casual collectors find their sweet spot somewhere between day 8 and day 18 of the 21-day premium window.
- When the premium drops to your target, register through ENS.Tools or the ENS app. If someone else snipes it earlier they paid more than you would have; if no-one does, you wait one more day and the price halves again.
- After registration, list immediately on the ENS.Tools marketplace if you're flipping, or set primary name + records if you're keeping it.
How the price decays — and what that means for timing
The premium roughly halves every 24 hours. Concretely:
- Day 1: ~$50,000,000
- Day 4: ~$6,250,000
- Day 7: ~$780,000
- Day 10: ~$98,000
- Day 14: ~$6,100
- Day 17: ~$760
- Day 18: ~$380
- Day 19: ~$190
- Day 20: ~$95
- Day 21: $0 — name reopens at standard registration price
Most retail collectors live in the day 14–21 window. The trade-off is simple: wait longer for a cheaper price, accept the risk that someone else grabs it first. For common-length names (5+ chars) there is usually no competition until day 18 or later; for 3- and 4-letter names, expect bidding to start days earlier.
Renewal costs to factor in
Beyond the premium and the annual fee at registration, remember that ENS names are term-limited. You'll pay the same annual fee again next year if you want to keep the name:
- 3-character names: $640/year
- 4-character names: $160/year
- 5+ character names: $5/year
For a 3-letter name that's $640 ongoing — meaningful for your hold-vs-flip math, and a reason a lot of premium names lapse back into the auction cycle in the first place. You can renew multiple names in a single transaction from /manage to save on gas.
The TL;DR
Watch the grace period to build your target list, decide your max-spend before the auction starts, and let the decay curve do the work. The premium halves every 24 hours, so patience is rewarded — most retail-friendly prices show up in the second half of the 21-day window. Use length-based and club-based filters to cut through the 1,000+ names that hit auction every day.
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