It is simpler which is a big win, but the main reason what you said wouldn’t work is because someone could claim a zillion names at no cost and never publish a nostr event to prove it. Then when someone decided to claim a name that the spammer had claimed (he could fit a million in the OTS transaction if he wanted), he could just reveal his first “claim” and rugpull the whole protocol.

In Nomen, there is a 5 byte fingerprint in the metadata. The fingerprint is the first five bytes of the HASH-160 of the name. It’s right there, in the open, on the blockchain. You can tell if anyone has claimed a name you want without publishing a Nostr event just by scanning the blockchain for your fingerprint. No chance of getting rug pulled by a sneaky squatter.