ENS Integration Spotlight: Argent

We believe that in every instance a user might otherwise see an Ethereum address or content hash, they should instead see an Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain. That’s our goal.

We’re not there yet, but there are many dapps who have already integrated ENS to better serve their users. We’d like to periodically highlight what they’ve done to give other dapp developers ideas of how to integrate ENS, to let users know where they can use ENS, and to show our appreciation.

If you are a developer and are interested in integrating ENS, we have everything you need in one place right here.

Today, we are going to highlight the great work being done by Argent, an Ethereum wallet.

With an all-star team based in Europe, Argent has been busy pushing Ethereum wallet design forward, winning the inaugural UX design award at Devcon4 last year.

And they have made great use of ENS!

An Argent user types in the ENS domain of her close friend. She trusts her, so she clicks ‘trust contact’. This means there’s no daily limit in what she can send. She also adds the contact as a Guardian.

ENS integration in Argent

“We got rid of long, cryptic addresses,” Argent CEO Itamar Lesuisse explains, “because they’re too intimidating and too easy to make mistakes with. With ENS on the other hand, you can just type a friend’s name and you’re done. It’s a small change with a big psychological impact.

It’s a small change with a big psychological impact. — Itamar Lesuisse, Argent CEO

They highlight their use of ENS on their website as a selling point for their wallet.

“The benefits aren’t limited to sending crypto either. We use ENS to simplify security features such as adding Guardians to help you recover and lock your wallet.”

An Argent user wants to send some Dai to a new friend. As soon as she knows the ENS, she can just select the asset, type the ENS and send. Argent pays the gas so it’s super easy.

There are three main ways they’ve integrated ENS:

First, they give new users their very own ENS domain for free in the on-boarding process.

You may have noticed they give users a subdomain of argent.xyz. The DNS TLD .xyz was opened for ENS integration a few months ago, which means the Argent team can not only use argent.xyz for their website, they can also use it as an ENS domain, and offer their users ENS subdomains with it. (Around 1300 more DNS TLDs will be open for ENS integration soon.)

Hence, Bob can use bob.argent.xyz as his ENS domain to represent his wallet and receive tokens.

A simple way of seeing your recent activity with your wallet.

This opens up some interesting possibilities UX possibilities, as explained by their Chief Science Officer, Julien Niset:

“For Argent’s ENS we did a DNSSEC integration to get the address argent.xyz. This is particularly exciting as it lets us bridge ENS and the web by linking a user’s ENS [username].argent.xyz with the web page http://[username].argent.xyz. We’re going to build on this to help Argent users with security operations, such as locking their wallet from their desktops.”

Second, they allow users to send tokens to ENS domains.

While they still allow a user to enter an Ethereum address or scan a QR code, they also allow users to simply type in the recipient’s ENS domain. They then find the corresponding Ethereum address and display it below, which allows for users to confirm the address if they want.

Sending Dai to a contact that you’ve already selected as one you trust. Again, Argent pays the gas so it’s simple.

Third, they give priority to displaying a user’s ENS domain rather than their Ethereum address.

As a result, throughout the app you see lots of ENS domains and few Ethereum addresses.

Remember the goal of users seeing ENS domains instead of Ethereum addresses? This is a great step toward that goal.

You can learn more about Argent on their website.

If your dapp has integrated ENS and you’d like us to feature it, please send us an email at brantly@ens.domains.