I thought about this some more.  I think that runes has probably already won the naming race on bitcoin.  There's 100,000++ paid names, and game theory, a whole eco system.  It will be hard to replace it with anything fairer.

The one problem might be that the spec changes.  There is a "turbo" flag which allows you to opt in to future upgrades.

My fork of runes, called glyphs, adds a similar flag to PROTECT against spec changes, and will allow it to advance with glyphs which will be nostr friendly.

I think I'm going to use glyphs in all my projects as the naming source of truth.  So from my POV, runes has already won this race.  I'd have gone with nomen, but it's no longer maintained.  I like spaces protocol but annual renewal is a flag for me, and also it'll be likely much smaller than runes for ages, or forever.  I might as well bet on the winner, and rework things if something overtakes it.

That said, runes have not yet tied in the domain name part.  So it's not a foregone conclusion.