> Names have to be renewed bi-annually. You don't need to pay a fee, you just need to submit a transaction to prove you still have access to the private key.

When talking about email alternatives here, I see a lot of comments strongly suggesting owning a custom domain and using it. If the domain cannot be renewed and kept alive in advance for a few years, the bus factor of being the only technical person in the family could mean that they lose their emails very soon (worst case scenario where something bad happens to the technical person towards the end of the bi-annual period just before the renewal).

“You need to submit a transaction to prove you still have access to the private key” — “transaction”? “prove”? “private key”? There’s no way this is going to last if people use these domains for emails and mailboxes for their families. At least with the conventional system, it’s easy to note down simple instructions to go to a site, pay and renew. This system seems better suited for institutions that may be able to handle it (though it could be argued that even large companies fail in trivial ways, like it happened with a certificate expiry with Microsoft recently).