P-024 REJECTED: Restore 1 Tez Pricing for 5+ Character Domains

Governance Proposals
1

Voting period: 7 days

Categories:

Social Proposal
Request for Action
Constitution Amendment

Abstract:

This proposal calls for restoring the price of all 5-character and longer Tezos Domains to 1 tez per year. The recent increase to 3 tez, enacted under Proposal P-021, was meant to increase revenue during a downturn in the fiat price of tez. But this approach was short-sighted and counterproductive. It misreads user behavior, undermines Tez-denominated pricing norms, and accelerates attrition, ultimately reducing—not increasing—revenue. As revenue is the concern, the more strategic move is to restore the 1 tez baseline—where users are more likely to renew, participate, and remain aligned with the Tezos-native economy. From there, future adjustments can be discussed with proper timing and structure.

Rationale:

  1. Abrupt price hikes increase attrition, not revenue
    Tripling the price from 1 tez to 3 tez doesn’t just affect new registrations—it affects every future renewal decision. Users reconsider whether it’s worth maintaining names they might otherwise have kept indefinitely. This leads to higher drop-off rates, reducing long-term revenue and damaging usage metrics.

  2. Users who missed the price window are already lost
    The idea that a price hike would drive urgent multi-year renewals has a narrow window of effectiveness. Now that the price is already at 3 tez, that effect is over. The opportunity has passed. Anyone who didn’t act before the change is now priced out, not incentivized.

  3. Incremental increases give multiple chances to capture value
    If the goal is to increase revenue, gradual price increases—communicated in advance—are more effective. They give users time to respond and allow the ecosystem to promote upcoming changes. Instead of one shot, you get several. That opportunity is gone under the current model. Restoring the 1 tez baseline gives us the chance to reframe the pricing path in a way that actually works.

  4. Tez is the native unit—protocol pricing should reflect that
    Repricing infrastructure because the USD value of tez is low introduces fiat volatility into a system that should remain denominated in tez. Users think in tez. Treasury balances are in tez. Raising prices in response to fiat conditions sends the wrong signal and undermines economic consistency.

  5. This is the time to reinforce trust, not extract more
    The 1 tez price has been understood and trusted for years. In the current environment, restoring it sends a strong signal of reliability and user alignment. It keeps domains accessible, encourages renewals, and creates the right conditions for future strategy—rather than rushing decisions under market pressure.

Details:

After restoring the baseline price, we can explore an incremental adjustment plan that would achieve the desired revenue results without damaging user retention, undermining trust, or losing the opportunity to promote future renewals. The original framework for such a plan was outlined here:
DRAFT: Advancing Pricing Adjustments for Scalable Revenue Growth

That approach uses small, pre-scheduled increases—each with sufficient notice and time to promote renewals—allowing the system to benefit from multiple FOMO cycles rather than a single hard cutoff. Returning to 1 tez gives us the ability to restart that process properly, if the community chooses to revisit it.

Specification:

Action #1: Update the pricing logic for Tezos Domains to set the registration and renewal cost of all domains with 5 or more characters to 1 tez per year.

Action #2: Revert the pricing tier introduced for these domains under Proposal P-021, effective within 72 hours of the proposal passing—to avoid further attrition.

Action #3: Apply the updated pricing uniformly across all relevant smart contracts, frontend interfaces, and social media.

Action #4: Ensure documentation and public pricing pages are updated to reflect the restored baseline.

Action #5: Open a discussion process to explore future incremental pricing strategies, with emphasis on user retention, campaign promotion, and Tez-denominated consistency.

This proposal has been created on Homebase after meeting all ACTIVE criteria.
Vote on P-024: Tezos Homebase
Vote Ends: May 29, 2025 18:28 PM GMT
Proposal Passing Requirement: Outcome with most votes, 10%+ TEDv quorum

2

Hi @Kevin, please can you add a rough timeline on the ‘Specification’ section of this proposal.

This proposal requires changes across the board, so a timeframe should be required. Even if its rough like; ‘required changes will come into effect within 30-days from proposal’s acceptance.’

Without a timeline, this proposal wouldn’t be able to go for voting as the outcome has no fixed date or no general date of implementation.

3

Okay done

2 Likes
4

I would like to request additional due diligence in terms of how this change intends to address the funding shortfall for 2025 and, more broadly, the potential for the project to cease operations the same year or early 2026.

5

Thanks, Primate. Just to clarify—this exact question is actually addressed directly in the proposal. I completely understand the concern—and I agree that sustainable funding is a critical goal.

That’s exactly why this proposal exists. Because we’ve already made the switch tripling the price, we can now clearly observe that any behavior we hoped to drive—namely, pre-renewal stocking—has already been front-loaded. That effect is done. Users who were going to lock in did so. And now we’re left with a steep price wall that increases drop-offs and suppresses future renewals.

In other words: the revenue optimization already played out—and it was a one-time spike. What follows now is higher attrition and fewer active domains. That’s not sustainable.

By restoring the 1 tez baseline, we give ourselves a chance to rebuild renewal confidence, re-anchor expectations, and—if desired and necessary—reintroduce a more gradual, incremental pricing plan that can be promoted at each step. That’s how we would actually maximize revenue over time: not with a single cliff, but with a measured curve that encourages ongoing participation and ongoing multi-year commitments

6

This isn’t addressed directly in the proposal. Nevertheless, this proposal will still be put to vote as it stands.

However, your reasoning would be much stronger if supported by financial and user data -specifically, a comparison of income data from one week before and one week after P-021 was implemented. While words and hypothetical solutions are helpful, proposals like this should be backed by concrete data to clearly justify why the changes are necessary.

This ongoing back-and-forth around pricing isn’t helping much. If anything, it risks alienating users and damaging the public perception of Tezos Domains, and potentially even Tezos itself by association, which is the last thing anyone wants.
@Kevin, if this proposal doesn’t pass, what are your next steps? Will you continue submitting the same proposal repeatedly? It seems like there’s a lack of alignment within the DAO.

7

This proposal to revert 5+ character domain pricing to 1 TEZ directly conflicts with the DAO’s ratified decision in P-021, which concluded less than a week ago. This proposal risks destabilizing governance by attempting to overturn a democratically settled outcome without allowing sufficient time to assess its effects.

While market volatility remains a challenge-as highlighted by critiques of blockchain domains’ overreliance on speculative value-governance mechanisms exist precisely to navigate these complexities through collective deliberation, not ad hoc reversals. The current pricing structure was adopted to address sustainability concerns amid fluctuating XTZ valuations, and frequent changes risk eroding trust in the DAO’s decision-making process.

I urge the community to respect the governance timeline and focus on building utility for Tezos Domains rather than revisiting settled votes. If operational adjustments are needed, they should follow structured feedback periods and be grounded in data from the implemented changes.

8

The previous proposal grouped all domain types into a single package, while the most interesting domains are those with 5+ characters. It would make sense to vote separately - on decreasing prices for 3–4 character domains, and increasing or keeping prices the same for 5+ character domains. People can re-vote and clearly express whether they actually support the price increase.

Especially considering that only a few people are making the decisions, they can quickly “confirm” the chosen direction. This way, regular users will have clarity on what to expect and plan the next steps.

It’s natural to expect that if interest is low, you would lower prices, add features or adjust your approach. Increasing the price is controversial, so having one more round of confirmation wouldn’t hurt.

9

Sounds like a good idea for a new proposal draft.

10

I don’t think it’s fair to say we’ve seen all the effects of the price change, less than a month from the price change date. To even compare the pre and post change income, we’d have to wait for at least one full month. But even there, comparing the first month of post change would be unfair because, like you said, there is a bump in sales at the start. In fact, there’s been lots more 5D+ sales since you posted here last 2 days ago.

You wrote that funding is critical but there is not enough consideration given to this aspect in the proposal other than general statements of belief. Do you think the 1D-4D domain name price changes by themselves are enough to sustain the project? We already know what the income is for 5D+ names at 1tez/year. We can use past months of 5D+ income to compare to.

11

Still expensive for current usage. Manipulating with pricing of 1D-4D probably won’t help much, at least not in this price difference. I would rather consider radical sales, maybe in that case people can consider hoarding and keeping until Tezos will display better performance overall. But it’s another topic.

12

In Tezos. In the case of expected bull market, the budget will multiply in dollars. Not the right time to increase anything right now. But if the bull market doesn’t happen, the ecosystem will be facing broader and more serious budget issues overall.

13

8 day prior to P-021 Execution:
5th May (AM) - 13th of May (Am) = total revenue of 784 XTZ

7 days after P-021 Execution
13th May (AM) - The time of writing this 20th May (PM) = 1,187 XTZ

I understand that this may not be a long enough time frame to draw definitive conclusions. However, the noticeable increase in income during this period suggests that affordability isn’t a significant concern. People were given a month’s notice, along with regular reminders on X, to renew. (1, 2, 3) This suggests that, while some may view the price increase for 5+ character domains negatively, in practice, it hasn’t had a noticeable impact on activity. A cost of $1.82 (currently 3 XTZ) is neither alienating nor prohibitively expensive, it’s only a barrier if someone is attempting to squat large numbers of domains.

This price change realistically should have been implemented from the OG price change proposal. Unfortunately, previous proposal blockages prevented us from thoroughly analyzing the potential impact, whether positive or negative. The lack of consensus and reluctance to engage in a trial-and-error process or continuously revisiting pricing proposals is holding us back.

*Income Data was captured manually from Tezos Domains Treasury on tzkt.io
**Subject to human error, may be a couple XTZ off either side, date data is correct, please do your own DD.
***Income Data didn’t include income from Auction’s for 1XTZ outcome during the price change on 13th of May 2025.
****Charts taken from Tezos Domains on tzkt.io

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14
  • New registration is a rare type of action. Do you have stats about new domains registrations?
  • I’ve seen multiple renewals from the same accounts after the price increase - so why didn’t they renew when it was still 1 tez? I was following the updates and renewed in time. They likely missed the chance to do it at the lower price.
    Again, it’s about current affordability in dollars, not in tez. $1.7 is fine, $15-20 is crazy expensive in comparison to .eth or to .sol
15

27, 5+
2, 4L

maybe, but it’s clear that the price increase even with less registrations and renewals has greater income, users are still renewing and registering.

Ofcourse, I feel like being able to review pricing every 6 months or a year is a good idea with the option to suspend time restriction to review pricing in emergency means (economic, bugs & vulnerabilities etc) This stops the whole backwards and forwards of the pricing option proposals & until there is enough $ to allocate a pegged USD value to per domain, this would have to be the way it is, otherwise the changes will just be going on and on and on, just not good for anyone really.

16

New registrations will soon become the most interesting data point.
For now, people have to renew if they missed the chance to do it earlier or have to decide what to do with their domains while they’re still “$1.82”.

If I had overlooked the update and missed the chance to renew in time, I would still renew the majority of my domains for “$1.82”, but it definitely gives me something to think about in terms of their purpose.

You see how many amazing domains are available and no sales on secondary market. With .eth, the problem is finding a good available name, with .tez, the problem is choosing from too many available ones.

17

Absolutely. We haven’t had enough time to fully assess the impact of the change. Continuously adjusting the pricing before we’ve gathered sufficient data will make it difficult to determine whether the change is ultimately beneficial or harmful to the project.

The users aren’t required to do anything they don’t want to. So far, only a small number of people have expressed concerns about the price changes, and from what I’ve seen, those individuals typically own more than 10 domains. This supports my earlier point that the changes primarily affect domain squatters who hold a large number of domains.

The popularity of Tezos Domains is closely tied to the overall popularity of the Tezos blockchain itself. You’re right to compare secondary market sales and similar metrics to .eth domains, but it’s important to recognize that you’re comparing the most widely used blockchain to Tezos.

18

Changed to P-024 ACTIVE. Proposal is now active on Homebase, locking the OP from further changes.

Voting info has been added to OP as per timestamp

1 Like
19

Makes sense, right? The more involved you are, the more you want to be heard and have better conditions. When I had just one domain, I didn’t care much about pricing, this forum or governance.

I wouldn’t use the word “squatters,” since it carries a negative tone. It’s hard to define the intentions behind collecting more than 10 domains, especially when the secondary market hasn’t been active for years. Personally, I collect them because they’re cheap, many good names are still available, I believe in Tezos and I like to daydream that one day I or my friends might use them, not for reselling as the main goal.

In the effort to sell more domains, you’ve unlocked previously unavailable ones, lowered prices, and launched an affiliate program. But this strategy of offering more opportunities and better conditions hasn’t applied to 5D+ domains. I understand the reasoning, but for people that collect more than “10 domains” it giving a question, if you really want to maintain this collection of domains. I have concerns, but no clear answer on what to do for now, at least not before the next bull market, somewhat $15-20 is expensive for this usage.

Ideally, it would make sense to focus on selling as many domains as possible, especially strong ones with good nouns, verbs and adjectives, before increasing the prices.

20

Honestly, it seems like the only people pushing for lower domain prices are those who own multiple domains. The income data clearly shows that higher prices have led to increased revenue, with continued registration and renewal activity. These constant price change proposals come off as unprofessional… people renew domains at 3 XTZ, and then just a week later, there’s a proposal to drop it back to 1 XTZ. That kind of inconsistency reflects poorly on the project.

Ideally, members here should view this pricing structure as a positive step forward. We should want the DAO’s revenue to grow, not shrink. If 1 XTZ was truly the ideal price point, why has the income been at its lowest point from the start of 2025, only rising after the price increase? The data speaks for itself.