Another factor could be the fact ENS names expire and require a renewal fee, which didn't make a whole of sense to me given the immutable nature of the blockchain - there's more overhead involved in expiring them but more profit to be made for the next renewal. The price was also ridiculously high if you ask me for something so basic, just like a bytes => address mapping, doesn't require a genius to make, although it seems like they managed to get some partnerships/integrations behind it which add the main value as it seems like there's some integration with web3 libs to know how to leverage ENS.
Anyways, I agree it probably was a fad and such but the way it was structured for renewals also makes me think lots of people just don't own their .eth handle anymore, so it wouldn't make any sense to share it. I'd have probably gotten one if it was one time cost for a permanent static address, but that wasn't what they were offering. I think it was something like $250 per year (in ETH at the time) to keep it active, I never opted into that because it seemed like something I would want to opt out of in the future - I'm not surprised ENS has some attrition, it's built into their business model.
Anyways, I agree it probably was a fad and such but the way it was structured for renewals also makes me think lots of people just don't own their .eth handle anymore, so it wouldn't make any sense to share it. I'd have probably gotten one if it was one time cost for a permanent static address, but that wasn't what they were offering. I think it was something like $250 per year (in ETH at the time) to keep it active, I never opted into that because it seemed like something I would want to opt out of in the future - I'm not surprised ENS has some attrition, it's built into their business model.