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<header class="hero">
  <h1>Sirius <span class="g">vs</span> traditional registrars &amp; other decentralized domains</h1>
  <p class="tag">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.</p>
  <p class="cmp-breadcrumbs"><a href="../">Silent Mode</a> → <a href="../sirius">Sirius</a> → Comparisons</p>
</header>

<div class="wrap">

<!-- ============ THE BIG TABLE ============ -->
<section class="plain">
  <h2>Side-by-side</h2>
  <div class="cmp-wrap">
    <table class="cmp-table">
      <thead>
        <tr>
          <th>What you get</th>
          <th>GoDaddy / Namecheap</th>
          <th>Cloudflare Registrar</th>
          <th>ENS (Ethereum)</th>
          <th>Unstoppable Domains</th>
          <th>Handshake (HNS)</th>
          <th>Sirius.X</th>
        </tr>
      </thead>
      <tbody>
        <tr>
          <td><b>First-year price</b></td>
          <td>$8–$30 (.com), promos lower</td>
          <td>Wholesale cost (~$9 .com)</td>
          <td>$5–$640/year by name length</td>
          <td>$5–$100+ one-time</td>
          <td>Auction price (variable)</td>
          <td class="sirius">$25–$500 one-time (per TLD)</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>Annual renewal</b></td>
          <td>$12–$30/year, forever</td>
          <td>~Wholesale cost each year</td>
          <td>Yearly, same tier</td>
          <td>None</td>
          <td>None (one bid at auction)</td>
          <td class="sirius"><b>None</b> on BNS1; BNS2 adds optional lifecycle</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>KYC / identity</b></td>
          <td>Email, phone, address, card</td>
          <td>Cloudflare account</td>
          <td>Ethereum address + ETH to pay gas</td>
          <td>Email + card (or crypto)</td>
          <td>HNS address</td>
          <td class="sirius"><b>None</b> — a wallet is all you need</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>Payment</b></td>
          <td>Card, PayPal</td>
          <td>Card</td>
          <td>ETH + gas fees</td>
          <td>Card, crypto</td>
          <td>HNS coins</td>
          <td class="sirius">BCH (on-chain fee only)</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>Ownership proof</b></td>
          <td>Row in registrar's SQL database</td>
          <td>Row in Cloudflare's database</td>
          <td>ERC-721 token in a smart contract</td>
          <td>ERC-721 token, bridged</td>
          <td>UTXO on HNS chain</td>
          <td class="sirius">CashTokens NFT in your own wallet</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>Who can revoke</b></td>
          <td>Registrar, registry, ICANN, court order</td>
          <td>Cloudflare, ICANN, court order</td>
          <td>Nobody (smart contract immutable)</td>
          <td>Smart-contract admin keys exist</td>
          <td>Nobody (chain-enforced)</td>
          <td class="sirius">Nobody — the NFT lives in your wallet</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>Custom TLDs</b></td>
          <td>No (ICANN monopoly)</td>
          <td>No</td>
          <td>No (locked to .eth)</td>
          <td>Fixed list by Unstoppable</td>
          <td>Yes (auction a name)</td>
          <td class="sirius"><b>Yes</b> — anyone can mint &amp; sell a TLD</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>Resolution path</b></td>
          <td>ICANN → TLD registry → nameservers → DNS</td>
          <td>Same as GoDaddy</td>
          <td>Smart-contract call via Infura/Alchemy</td>
          <td>Proprietary gateway + partial on-chain</td>
          <td>HNS resolver / HSD</td>
          <td class="sirius">Any electrum server reads chain + public beacon</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>Browser support</b></td>
          <td>Universal (ICANN DNS)</td>
          <td>Universal</td>
          <td>MetaMask or gateway</td>
          <td>Gateway or extension</td>
          <td>Resolver required</td>
          <td class="sirius">Native in Theseus / Ariadne; gateway for every other browser via navigate.st</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>What you can host</b></td>
          <td>Hosting provider you contract with</td>
          <td>Any provider you contract with</td>
          <td>IPFS hash in a text record</td>
          <td>IPFS hash</td>
          <td>IP + DNS records</td>
          <td class="sirius">Inline HTML on-chain, free Sia bucket, or your own IP with TLS pinned on-chain</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td><b>Resale</b></td>
          <td>Transfer via registrar fees + lock</td>
          <td>Transfer in-platform</td>
          <td>OpenSea, Uniswap</td>
          <td>Secondary market in-app</td>
          <td>On-chain</td>
          <td class="sirius">Built-in marketplace, one tx, no escrow</td>
        </tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
  </div>
</section>

<!-- ============ WHERE EACH OPTION WINS ============ -->
<section class="plain">
  <h2>Where each option genuinely wins</h2>
  <p class="lede">Nothing is best at everything. The honest tradeoffs:</p>

  <div class="cmp-pros">
    <div class="card">
      <h3>GoDaddy / Namecheap wins when…</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>You need a <code>.com</code> because every email client and link preview knows it.</li>
        <li>Your users are strictly Chrome/Safari and will not install anything.</li>
        <li>You accept censorship risk as a cost of doing business.</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="card">
      <h3>Cloudflare Registrar wins when…</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>You already use Cloudflare for everything else and want wholesale pricing.</li>
        <li>You still want ICANN-governed names but hate the markup.</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="card">
      <h3>ENS wins when…</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>Your entire userbase already has MetaMask open.</li>
        <li>You want to tie a name to an Ethereum address for payments.</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="card">
      <h3>Unstoppable Domains wins when…</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>You want a one-time purchase and don't need a self-custodial chain.</li>
        <li>Your audience is already in the Unstoppable browser extension.</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="card">
      <h3>Handshake wins when…</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>You're minting a TLD and want DNS-root replacement without any middleman.</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="card" style="background:rgba(214,255,61,.06);border-color:rgba(214,255,61,.3)">
      <h3>Sirius wins when…</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>You want <b>anonymity</b> — no email, no phone, no card, nothing attached to who you are.</li>
        <li>You want to <b>pay once and keep the name forever</b>.</li>
        <li>You want to <b>mint your own TLD</b> — not just register under someone else's.</li>
        <li>Your audience includes Bitcoin Cash users (every BCH wallet is already a resolver client).</li>
        <li>You care that <b>no entity, not even Silent Mode, can take the name back</b>.</li>
        <li>You want flexible hosting: inline-on-chain for tiny sites, free Sia storage for normal ones, your own server for anything else — all pointed at by one record.</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
  </div>
</section>

<!-- ============ COST OVER TIME ============ -->
<section class="plain">
  <h2>Cost over a decade</h2>
  <p class="lede">The headline price is the first-year number. The real cost is what
    you pay to keep the name in year ten. Taking a <b>$20/year</b> midrange name as the
    baseline:</p>

  <table class="cmp-table">
    <thead>
      <tr><th>Years</th><th>GoDaddy / Namecheap</th><th>ENS (.eth, 5-char)</th><th>Unstoppable</th><th>Sirius.X</th></tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <tr><td>Year 1</td><td>$20</td><td>$5 + gas (~$20 total)</td><td>$40 one-time</td><td class="sirius">$25–$500 one-time (TLD-set)</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Year 5</td><td>$100</td><td>$25 + 5× gas (~$75)</td><td>$40 total</td><td class="sirius">Same one-time payment</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Year 10</td><td><b>$200</b></td><td><b>~$150</b> (if gas stays flat)</td><td>$40 total</td><td class="sirius"><b>Same one-time payment</b></td></tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>
  <p>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.</p>
</section>

<!-- ============ FINAL CTA ============ -->
<section class="plain">
  <h2>See what's available</h2>
  <p>Open <a href="/sirius-x/#search-input">Sirius.X</a>, 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.</p>
  <div class="cta" style="margin-top:1.4rem">
    <a class="btn acid" href="/sirius-x/#search-input">Register a name →</a>
    <a class="btn ghost" href="../sirius">Back to Sirius overview</a>
    <a class="btn ghost" href="/sirius-x/docs/">Protocol docs</a>
  </div>
</section>

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  <p>Silent Mode — a Deviant project. Decentralized domain names on the Bitcoin Cash
    chain. Chipnet is live; mainnet BNS2 cutover coming.</p>
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