ENS Explained: What Is the Ethereum Name Service, How ENS Works and What ENS is Used For

what is ens

No central entity like a government can ban your .eth domains in any geographical region. Now, if you’ve carefully read our Academy articles, you know what difference that makes. It renders domains registered through ENS more private, secure, and censorship-resistant. ENS is based on a set of decentralized smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. As such, there is no need for centralized operators and systems that DNS relies upon. Token holders can propose changes, from technical upgrades to policy shifts, which are then put to a DAO vote.

what is ens

How to Register an Ethereum Name Service (ENS) Domain?

what is ens

By transforming complicated strings of characters into short and memorable, human-readable links. ENS also serves to make crypto transactions more understandable and accessible for blockchain beginners. Similar services may appear in the future, but as of yet, ENS does not have any comparable rivals that can do all that it does. Those wishing to create their Web3 username can visit the ENS app and start by searching for an available domain name.

Ethereum Name Service analytics

After reading this, you should walk away with a new understanding of why ENS was created, what its goals are and where it’s headed. Given below is one such dummy example of an address mapped to the ENS domain. ENS tokens can be bought at a number of different exchanges such as Binance, FTX and more.

Ethereum Name Service Token Unlocks

In the world of decentralized applications and platforms, ENS has been making its mark in terms of easy accessibility and easier ways to interact with the blockchain. You can consider the example of IPS addresses that are no longer used in the same way as they were before. Similarly, ENS will be replacing DNS and will be a completely new way through which we navigate on the web to different websites, digital wallets, smart contracts, and a lot more.

Resolving an ENS name is a two-step process where you first ask the registry for the correct resolver contract and then ask the resolver to return the correct address. Zoltan is a writer at Forkast with a deep passion for storytelling and blockchain. Prior to joining the team, he worked as a marketing and content writer, focused on software what do u mean by variable and technology. Zoltan holds a master’s degree from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and is interested in the future of global financial decentralization. The ENS DAO has also attracted significant interest to the protocol, as it airdropped 25% of the total token supply with the launch of the DAO on November 9, 2021.

  1. EnerSys has confirmed that its next quarterly earnings data will be published on Wednesday, August 7th, 2024.
  2. It has definitely made the crypto space a lot easier to access and understand for everyone.
  3. This practice has led to complaints where people have been unable to buy a domain with their name, despite the fact it is not in use, such as JohnSmith.domain.
  4. The mapping of DNS names relies on root servers to answer queries for records stored in the root zone.

DNS names can contain multiple records that point to various locations that Internet services use. For example, a DNS mail record, or MX record may point to the location of an email server used to deliver email to the correct servers. As a simple example, Vitalik.eth is an ENS name that maps to 0xd8dA6BF26964aF9D7eEd9e03E53415D37aA96045, an Ethereum blockchain address. In May of 2017, the first ENS names were minted, starting with rilxxlir.eth.

what is ens

Thus, if you own realsatoshi.org, you can link it directly to realsatoshi.eth so visitors can view content and send money to the exact same place. Like the DNS, the ENS uses a system of hierarchical names called domains, with the creator and owner of the domain having control over his top-level domain and subsequent subdomains. Similar to the role of the DNS mentioned above, the role of the ENS is to map human-readable names such as “john.eth” to a machine-readable name such as a wallet address like “8g978dl39ji9xl.” The domain names should be 3+ characters long and there are different pricing for 3, 4, 5 plus character names. One can transfer subdomains to others and even create registrars of our domains.

As mentioned above, there is a difference between owning a name and owning a registration. A “name” acts as a way for the ENS to identify a given domain such as “john.eth” and can consist of different labels that are separated by dots. This resets the ownership of the ENS name to the registrar who has reclaimed a given account.

ENS Ecosystem has wallets like coin base wallets and mycrypto, apps like OpenSea and Etherscan, and browsers like Beacon and EthDNS. The goal is to make easy access to Ethereum-based web for humans similar to DNS. The cryptocurrency space is a highly technical field, which is often enough to discourage crypto beginners from exploring this space. Yet, ENS solves this major adoption hurdle, by making crypto more accessible and easier to use.

More so, it aims to connect all wallets, websites, and subdomains of a person under a single link, making the crypto space more user-friendly and less technical. ENS and similar incentives will be crucial for removing the psychological roadblocks of global crypto adoption. ENS is governed by the community members as a DAO(decentralized autonomous organization).

Once those records are stored, developers can resolve these records programmatically using resolvers on the blockchain. Since the .eth TLD is already reserved for the country of Ethiopia, though not in use, it will prevent future naming collisions with DNS and help ensure integration with pre-existing DNS systems. Keep your identity consistent across all services and platforms effortlessly.

The nicknames can be used across the globe to transfer and trade crypto and NFT through any decentralized apps. It has definitely made the crypto space a lot easier to access and understand for everyone. The popularity of ENS can be seen through its ENS DAO, which was launched on November 9, 2021, and got a market capitalization of $1 billion the very next day. ENS is going to overtake the DNS namespace in the coming years completely and it is easily understandable the amount of growth it will have in the future. ENS is based on smart contracts which are further developed on the Ethereum platform.

Only 10% of these tokens were available for immediate use, and the remaining ENS were scheduled to unlock over the course of 4 years (ending in 2025). This funding led to the creation of an organization now called ENS Labs, a non-profit based in Singapore, that directs the development of ENS. Over the years, updates to the protocol have included support of addresses beyond .eth (like .xyz and Tor’s .onion) and the compliance of ENS names with the ERC-721 non-fungible token (NFT) standard. In order to govern the system, ENS uses a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) comprised of holders of its ENS token.

You’ll now see the option to [Start your claim process] along with the amount that you’re eligible to receive. I cover the educational content of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain. The three- and four-character names have higher prices because they’re more scarce. You can also buy a popular ENS domain name for tens of thousands of dollars in an auction. Today, you can type a .eth name into a Brave browser, and it will resolve to a website if that .eth name has a content hash set.

In the spirit of decentralization, the Ethereum Name Service is operated by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The DAO is governed by holders of the ENS token, who can submit proposals and vote on them to determine the protocol’s https://cryptolisting.org/ future development. The ENS token was airdropped to early adopters who had previously registered an ENS domain name. The claiming process started on November 8th, 2021, and users had until May 4th, 2022, to claim their allotted tokens.

The ENS token quickly gained traction among investors, as its market capitalization soared past the US$1 billion mark on November 10 — only a day after the launch of the ENS DAO. As the cryptocurrency space is highly technical, it can be overwhelming for first-time users and non-tech-savvy individuals to onboard. The number of available domains is already increasing and will reach a new number in the next few years. Similarly, the popularity of subdomains of domains like .eth has also increased in the last couple of years. If a user wants to submit a proposal to the ENS community, they will need the support of 100,000 tokens for it to go to a vote.

These usernames are based on the Web 3.0 platform and can be commonly used on all blockchain and decentralized apps, instead of creating a complex and unique username for each. Not only websites, and digital wallets, but these unique ENS can also be used on metadata, smart contracts, and more. The possibility of using ENS on different elements would have already increased by the time Web 3.0 comes in. Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain. The job of ENS is to convert human-readable addresses like yourname.eth to machine-readable addresses like veryverylongname.hash.you… that have IP hashes, wallets, smart contracts, etc.

On a technical level, the ENS can make use of the existing Ethereum ecosystem, meaning it is highly programmable and can interact with other smart contracts outside of naming. “Registrars” are smart contracts that allocate the subdomain names and are governed by the main registrar called the permanent registrar. They can be altered at any point or at any level within the ENS and can be referred to by the owner of the registry. Through the ENS, users can buy and manage their own domains, meaning that secure and decentralized transactions can take place without having to deal with long and complex addresses. It also reduces the likelihood of any input errors when typing out the recipient’s address to send funds. All the token holders govern the decentralized autonomous organization.