Side-by-side comparison of five ways to buy and use a domain name in 2026 — one of them cheaper than lunch, three of them running on their own blockchain, one of them still inviting you to pay rent forever.
| BNS (navigate.st) | ENS | Unstoppable Domains | Handshake | ICANN registrar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chain / backing | Bitcoin Cash (CashTokens NFT) | Ethereum (ERC-721 NFT) | Polygon / Ethereum (NFT) | Handshake (own L1) | Central registry (Verisign, etc.) |
| Starting price (1 year) | ~$0.25 on .x |
~$5 on .eth + gas |
$20+ one-time (varies) | Auction-only (bid in HNS) | $9–20/yr, premiums much higher |
| Renewal fee | None on most TLDs | Yes, yearly in ETH | None (one-time buy) | None after auction | Yes, yearly, often increased |
| Transaction fee | Fraction of a cent | $1–50 (ETH gas) | ~$0 (merchant pays Polygon gas) | Varies with HNS price | N/A (fiat charge) |
| Resolves in browsers | Any browser via navigate.st Native via Theseus / Ariadne |
eth.link, Brave, MetaMask | Browser extension / Opera | Needs HNS resolver | Universal (DNS) |
| Full DNS records (A, AAAA, SRV, CAA, TXT) |
Yes | Partial | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in site hosting | Yes — Sia buckets | IPFS integration | IPFS integration | None | None |
| Email routing | Yes (SRV/MX) | Limited | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Open-source resolver | Yes (Ariadne, MPL-2.0) | Yes | Partial | Yes (hsd) | N/A |
| Open-source registry server | Yes (Argus, Apache-2.0) | Yes (on-chain) | No | Yes | No |
| Can the registrar revoke the name? | No one can | No one can | UD is the registrar | No one can | Yes (court order, policy change) |
| Censorship resistance | Chain + Sia + Theseus | Chain + IPFS | Chain + UD gateway | Chain + hsd | Low — DNS can be seized |
| Works offline (local resolver) | Yes (Theseus / Ariadne) | Partial | Partial | Yes (hsd) | No (depends on DNS infra) |
| Public TLDs available | 14 today, operator-mintable | .eth only | ~20 curated | Thousands (auction) | ~1500 (ICANN delegation) |
Pick BNS if you want the cheapest decentralized domain available in 2026, actual DNS records (not just a wallet address), site hosting out of the box, no annual renewal on most TLDs, and a resolver you can run yourself. Trade-off: ecosystem is younger than ENS or Handshake and resolution outside Theseus / Ariadne goes through a gateway.
Pick ENS if you need the biggest existing wallet-identifier ecosystem and are already on Ethereum. You will pay more in gas and yearly rent.
Pick Unstoppable Domains if you want a one-time purchase with the broadest third-party integrations and don't mind that Unstoppable itself is the registrar (centralised in the business sense, even if the name itself is on-chain).
Pick Handshake if you want a competing root for ICANN's top-level space, like running your own resolver, and are comfortable bidding in HNS.
Pick an ICANN registrar if you need universal browser compatibility today, a corporate buyer, or a brand your legal team can enforce in traditional court. You accept that the registry can revoke the name and you pay rent forever.
.x
floor is $0.25/year today, future TLDs may price differently.