It's interesting that you mention Real Estate, because Vitalik's solution is inspired by the "Land Value Tax" idea in Real Estate, which is a policy widely supported by economists as the "least bad tax" and which directly attacks rentierism and land speculation, which are the direct cause of inflated land prices and a significant contributor to the ongoing housing crisis (as well as inflation overall, as rent inflation is a major contributor).

Fun fact: the problem with domain names has happened over and over again in a related field -- online games. In fact, wherever you see a "land like asset" arise (defined as an asset that is scarce in supply, necessary for production, and which obtains value from its location), you will see something analogous to land speculation. Digital "land value taxes" have been attempted before, and the best evidence available suggests that they are very effective:

https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/land-value-tax-in-...

Right now in domains some services have a very, very crude approximation of a "land value tax" where they charge a fixed higher fee for "premium" domains (common words). This has a slight effect on dampening speculation, but the root problem is that the fee is not directly proportional to the desirability of the domain (ie, the location). The solution is not a blanket high fee across everything -- it's perfectly fine for the holding cost fopr things that aren't currently in high demand to be eeffectively zero -- it's to have a holding fee that rises and falls in proportion to demand for the non-produced, necessary asset.