[mattdesl]

Sure, they are apples and oranges. Namecheap will likely never be able to match these settlement times, 0-2.5% fees, data privacy, interoperability etc.

If they decide to one day sell crypto domains like ‘.eth’ and ‘.tez’, they will be entering an extremely competitive market; and compete against marketplaces that trade any valid NFT (including domains) like Objkt.com and OpenSea, with commissions around 2.5%, no need for data sharing, and instant settlements. They would also be competing against custom contracts and OSS tools which may take no fees, and other directly peer-to-peer transactions like I outlined in my OP.

The point I’m trying to illustrate here is that there are reasons for choosing a decentralized and peer-to-peer system of digital assets & ownership over a purely centralized system, and blockchain is currently an ideal tech for this application.

[hiq]

Again, whatever technical advantage Tezos might have in terms of efficiency, nothing prevents Namecheap from using a database instead of a blockchain and reaching higher efficiency.

You're assuming that the fees you pay Namecheap are representative of their costs. You could also say that Apple will never be able to compete with mid-range Android phones because iPhones are so expensive,. The point of a business is to make money, and the margin represents a big share of the price, so you can't just forget about it. The price / fees don't necessarily reflect anything about the business costs, especially in tech.

Blockchain-based solutions are usually cheap because they're either subsidized (like Uber was very cheap because it was just not profitable), because they offer a strictly worse product (almost no company wants a .tez) or a combination of both.