In the meantime it might be worthwhile to develop alternatives, like some kind of DNS-over-Tor or DNS-over-DHT scheme, along with normalizing Tor onion services as an alternative access method for clearnet sites.
https://www.kraken.com/learn/what-is-ethereum-name-service-e...
All the things that crypto true believers believed would happen are slowly coming to pass. It wasn't all bored apes and gambling. There was some legitimate developing going on, and still is.
I’m not ideologically against cryptocurrency-based solutions, but it isn’t a magic bullet by any means. I still think that the EU in particular isn’t done making life difficult for crypto users.
Not to discourage projects like ENS, I think it’s good to have alternatives, but I do think we need noncommercial fallbacks to the current system as well. Anything involving money will always have choke points.
This is the problem with crypto discourse - people view the guy selling snake oil on the sidewalk outside the gas station on the same level as legitimate infrastructure project that is the combined work product of hundreds of people who aren't trying to scam anyone, just make useful stuff.
The only solution to this is being willing to learn about the technology, which is a very unpopular view on HN.
Additionally, the EU could block purchase of ENS from exchanges. This added friction, though minor, is enough to slow uptake. I look at Monero as an example. It is functional and stable and it does what it claims. Yet hardly anyone uses it, because it has been effectively fenced off through a series of very low hurdles. It is not hard to swap to Monero for privacy, so why don’t more people do it?
IMHO ordinary users are much more likely to install a resolver that doesn’t have any connection to cryptocurrency. (The media campaign against crypto has been very effective.)
I do think crypto people ought to keep trying to develop their tools: there is some utility in it, and it may be more useful as things evolve. But it’s not a panacea, and the fact that it is “digital money” makes operators legally more vulnerable to attacks and regulation under current laws and legal precedents. Distributed, digital-only, non-monetary, volunteer-run networks like Tor are legally very resilient for now, at least in the West. (That could change, but it hasn’t yet.)