A plain comparison across the dimensions that actually matter when picking a registrar: price (now and in ten years), what you had to hand over to get the name, who can take it back, whether it renews, and what you can host behind it. No marketing superlatives — every row is a verifiable fact about how each service works today.
| What you get | GoDaddy / Namecheap | Cloudflare Registrar | ENS (Ethereum) | Unstoppable Domains | Handshake (HNS) | Sirius.X |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-year price | $8–$30 (.com), promos lower | Wholesale cost (~$9 .com) | $5–$640/year by name length | $5–$100+ one-time | Auction price (variable) | $25–$500 one-time (per TLD) |
| Annual renewal | $12–$30/year, forever | ~Wholesale cost each year | Yearly, same tier | None | None (one bid at auction) | None on BNS1; BNS2 adds optional lifecycle |
| KYC / identity | Email, phone, address, card | Cloudflare account | Ethereum address + ETH to pay gas | Email + card (or crypto) | HNS address | None — a wallet is all you need |
| Payment | Card, PayPal | Card | ETH + gas fees | Card, crypto | HNS coins | BCH (on-chain fee only) |
| Ownership proof | Row in registrar's SQL database | Row in Cloudflare's database | ERC-721 token in a smart contract | ERC-721 token, bridged | UTXO on HNS chain | CashTokens NFT in your own wallet |
| Who can revoke | Registrar, registry, ICANN, court order | Cloudflare, ICANN, court order | Nobody (smart contract immutable) | Smart-contract admin keys exist | Nobody (chain-enforced) | Nobody — the NFT lives in your wallet |
| Custom TLDs | No (ICANN monopoly) | No | No (locked to .eth) | Fixed list by Unstoppable | Yes (auction a name) | Yes — anyone can mint & sell a TLD |
| Resolution path | ICANN → TLD registry → nameservers → DNS | Same as GoDaddy | Smart-contract call via Infura/Alchemy | Proprietary gateway + partial on-chain | HNS resolver / HSD | Any electrum server reads chain + public beacon |
| Browser support | Universal (ICANN DNS) | Universal | MetaMask or gateway | Gateway or extension | Resolver required | Native in Theseus / Ariadne; gateway for every other browser via navigate.st |
| What you can host | Hosting provider you contract with | Any provider you contract with | IPFS hash in a text record | IPFS hash | IP + DNS records | Inline HTML on-chain, free Sia bucket, or your own IP with TLS pinned on-chain |
| Resale | Transfer via registrar fees + lock | Transfer in-platform | OpenSea, Uniswap | Secondary market in-app | On-chain | Built-in marketplace, one tx, no escrow |
Nothing is best at everything. The honest tradeoffs:
.com because every email client and link preview knows it.The headline price is the first-year number. The real cost is what you pay to keep the name in year ten. Taking a $20/year midrange name as the baseline:
| Years | GoDaddy / Namecheap | ENS (.eth, 5-char) | Unstoppable | Sirius.X |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $20 | $5 + gas (~$20 total) | $40 one-time | $25–$500 one-time (TLD-set) |
| Year 5 | $100 | $25 + 5× gas (~$75) | $40 total | Same one-time payment |
| Year 10 | $200 | ~$150 (if gas stays flat) | $40 total | Same one-time payment |
Over 10 years a typical ICANN name costs 10× what a Sirius name costs — and the Sirius name is still yours even if Silent Mode disappears, because the certificate lives in your wallet, not on our server.
Open Sirius.X, type a label, see every TLD it could live under in one view. Register in a single transaction — chipnet today (free test coins), mainnet when BNS2 lands.