Cross Chain Names Risks in Decentralized Naming

As blockchain technologies mature, the concept of decentralized naming has emerged as a radical counterpart to the traditional domain name system that has governed the internet for decades. Projects such as the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), Handshake, Unstoppable Domains, and others aim to provide human-readable identifiers within their ecosystems, binding blockchain addresses, smart contracts, and digital identities to recognizable strings of text. This innovation promises greater autonomy, censorship resistance, and alignment with decentralized infrastructure. Yet as multiple chains and naming protocols proliferate, the question of cross-chain names—identifiers that exist across different blockchains or naming systems—raises profound risks that the industry has yet to fully resolve. These risks span technical collisions, governance uncertainty, legal ambiguity, user confusion, and the potential for large-scale disputes over digital identity.

At the heart of the issue lies the fact that unlike the centralized DNS, which operates under ICANN and is carefully coordinated to avoid conflicts, decentralized naming systems are fragmented. Each blockchain or decentralized protocol has the authority to establish its own namespace, independent of others. This means that the same label, such as alice.eth on Ethereum, alice.crypto on Unstoppable Domains, or alice/ on Handshake, can point to entirely different entities depending on the system. The lack of coordination introduces inherent risks. If a user expects alice.crypto to belong to the same identity as alice.eth but instead finds a different owner or malicious actor, trust in the reliability of decentralized naming erodes quickly.

One technical challenge is namespace collision. In the DNS world, ICANN prevents two TLDs from conflicting, ensuring that .com or .org resolve globally in a consistent way. But in decentralized naming, multiple projects can issue the same or similar strings without coordination. For example, Handshake auctions off TLDs, ENS reserves .eth domains, and other projects may use the same suffixes in different contexts. A user trying to resolve name.hns on Handshake and name.eth on ENS may understand the difference, but when TLDs or labels overlap, confusion becomes inevitable. Worse, wallets, browsers, and resolution tools must decide which system to prioritize when conflicts arise, creating a fragmented resolution environment where “the same” name might resolve differently depending on the software or chain being used.

Another risk is tied to user experience and discoverability. Decentralized naming advocates argue that human-readable identifiers make blockchain use easier, but if multiple versions of the same name exist across chains, it complicates rather than simplifies adoption. A business that secures its brand on ENS may find that another party registers the same brand on Handshake, potentially diverting traffic or creating fraudulent use cases. Without a governing body to adjudicate disputes, the burden of maintaining identity across chains falls entirely on users and businesses. This increases costs and risk, as brands must defensively register across numerous naming systems, each with different rules, costs, and mechanisms.

Legal and regulatory risks further complicate cross-chain naming. Traditional DNS operates under a system of contracts, dispute policies like the UDRP, and jurisdictional oversight. In decentralized naming, no such centralized enforcement mechanism exists. This leaves brand owners vulnerable to trademark abuse, phishing, and impersonation. If a malicious actor secures a name on a blockchain-based system, they may use it to trick users into sending funds to fraudulent addresses. Without a clear path to dispute resolution, victims have little recourse. Some projects attempt to implement on-chain governance models for dispute resolution, but these remain experimental and lack the legitimacy of established legal frameworks. Moreover, courts may struggle to enforce judgments against anonymous registrants on decentralized systems, creating an enforcement gap that criminals can exploit.

Interoperability adds yet another layer of risk. As developers attempt to bridge decentralized naming systems with DNS, conflicts arise. For instance, some browsers and plugins attempt to resolve Handshake names alongside ICANN names, while others integrate ENS resolution directly. These hybrid models introduce technical risk, as one namespace could unintentionally override another. For instance, if .coin is recognized by both an alternative blockchain system and a future ICANN-approved TLD, software may struggle to determine which version to resolve. This is not a theoretical concern: overlaps between new gTLDs and blockchain namespaces are already surfacing, and the potential for misrouting traffic or misidentifying resources grows as more naming systems come online.

From a security standpoint, cross-chain naming also amplifies phishing and social engineering risks. Users may be lured into thinking they are interacting with a trusted party because they recognize a name, unaware that it exists in a different chain context. For example, bob.eth may belong to a legitimate DeFi developer, while bob.crypto is controlled by a scammer. The subtle distinction between suffixes is easy for users to miss, especially in high-speed, high-value transactions. Wallet providers and dApps must therefore take on the burden of educating users and implementing safeguards, but the more fragmented the naming ecosystem becomes, the more difficult these protections are to enforce effectively.

There are also long-term risks around persistence and governance. Decentralized projects often promise immutability—once a name is registered, it cannot be taken away. But immutability can become a liability in cases of abuse or fraud. Unlike ICANN, which can revoke domains used for criminal purposes, decentralized naming systems lack a centralized authority to intervene. Some projects experiment with governance tokens and voting systems to address this, but these are prone to capture by whales or attackers. In the cross-chain context, immutability in one system may conflict with governance changes in another, leading to further divergence and inconsistency. Investors and businesses who build on these names face uncertainty about whether their identifiers will maintain credibility over the long term.

Economically, cross-chain naming also creates inefficiencies and risks of speculative bubbles. Because names can be registered independently across multiple systems, speculators may rush to corner key identifiers in hopes of selling them back to brands or investors at a premium. This multiplies defensive registration costs for businesses and dilutes the value of names across chains. The result is a fractured market where the same brand may exist in half a dozen competing systems, each with its own speculators, price dynamics, and liquidity risks. Unlike DNS, where .com’s dominance creates clear value hierarchies, decentralized naming lacks a unifying layer to concentrate demand, leaving businesses uncertain about where to invest.

The collision between decentralized naming and traditional DNS also raises existential questions. If ICANN one day delegates a TLD like .eth or .coin in the root zone, what happens to the blockchain-based equivalents that already exist? Will browsers prioritize ICANN’s version, rendering the blockchain namespace invisible to most users? Or will blockchain users insist on their parallel systems, creating two internet experiences? Such forks in user experience threaten to undermine trust in naming as a whole, which is particularly dangerous when names are tied to financial transactions, identities, and smart contracts where mistakes are costly and irreversible.

For all these risks, innovation in decentralized naming continues, driven by the appeal of censorship resistance and user control. The promise is real: names that are portable across wallets, dApps, and chains, immune from government takedowns or registrar abuse. But without coordination, governance frameworks, or interoperability standards, cross-chain names may deliver as much confusion as empowerment. The challenge for the industry lies in balancing decentralization with the need for reliability, predictability, and user safety. Standards bodies, consortia, or even informal agreements between projects could help mitigate the risks of collisions and abuse, but achieving consensus in the decentralized world is notoriously difficult.

In the end, cross-chain names embody both the potential and the perils of decentralized naming. They highlight the ambition to create a truly user-owned internet, free from centralized control, but also expose the limits of fragmentation in a system where trust depends on consistency. Unless the risks of namespace collision, user confusion, regulatory gaps, and interoperability failures are addressed, decentralized naming could struggle to gain mainstream adoption beyond niche communities. For domain investors, businesses, and developers, the message is clear: decentralized names are not simply an alternative to DNS but a parallel universe with its own risks, one that must be navigated carefully. The stakes are high, because in the digital world, names are not just labels—they are the foundation of identity, trust, and commerce. Cross-chain confusion risks eroding that foundation just as quickly as decentralization promises to strengthen it.

As blockchain technologies mature, the concept of decentralized naming has emerged as a radical counterpart to the traditional domain name system that has governed the internet for decades. Projects such as the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), Handshake, Unstoppable Domains, and others aim to provide human-readable identifiers within their ecosystems, binding blockchain addresses, smart contracts, and…