Why ENS matters
The ethereum naming service (ENS), which allows you to register .eth domains to the ethereum blockchain, is quietly chugging along. Without much fanfare this new decentralized naming service has seen 650,000+ name auctions with top domain names such as exchange.eth and tickets.eth collecting 6660.0 ETH ($1.9M) and 2977 ETH ($0.9M) respectively in deposits. Just this week support for claiming DNS domains on ENS went live on the Ropsten test network for the .xyz TLD. And although a majority of wallets do not currently support the sending of cryptocurrency to the .eth domains, new dapps and wallets are contemplating or working towards ENS integration. The unique properties of ENS — user ownership, portability, and extensible standards — have wide reaching implications for the entire cryptocurreny ecosystem.
You currently don’t own your internet handle. Almost every network you use owns your user name and user data. Twitter owns your twitter handle — and profits from it — and your email address is actually controlled by someone else (unless you run your own domain and mail server). Moving your email address from gmail to outlook or vice versa is a mess of contact uploads / downloads and potential lost emails in the move. Now consider your phone number. In the 90’s there was a time when you were unable to move this easily before legislative intervention allowed users to more easily port between phone companies. With ENS there is the potential for this same type of consumer choice to drive innovation. When you own your name you can now move between applications with less lock in and control how your name works. A global naming service controlled by users will likely supersede application level naming — you will care less about your twitter handle since it’s easy to look you up on any social network according to your global .eth name.
Cross application sign on and lookup is a really big deal. Lots of people have attempted various methods and tools for single sign on (SSO), but none have yet triumphed. A lot of this can be attributed to the issue of having some central authority define the standard. Central authorities have issues with trust and security and for good reason — it’s hard to know if they are doing their job and hard to tell if the protocol is secure. A decentralized naming system on the blockchain solves these issues because the protocol code is public, open to inspection by anyone, and the data associated with the name is customizable (and owned) by the user. It’s also “portable”, and instead of having 1 different user name for each account, you can have a single global identifier — yourname.eth — which you can link back to each of your accounts as you see fit.
Linking hexadecimal cryptocurreny addresses to human readable names is the first offered use case for .eth domains. However, we expect to see an extension of name resolution to dapps and social applications in the near future, and the additional benefit of this information being public on the blockchain will encourage the development of secondary search tools to better connect networks. Imagine a future when you can look up the music of your favorite star by typing in their instagram name in a reverse lookup to ENS and being directed to a list of available authorized downloads each cryptographically signed to ensure authenticity and easily downloaded from a cloud storage protocol such as IPFS. Or simply being able to send any type of cryptocurrency, BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, etc. to yourname.eth and having the wallet application direct the payment to the right address.
(domain-name + service-name — -> service-address)
Yourname.eth, eth→ 0xfB6916095ca1df60bB79Ce92cE3Ea74c37c5d359
JohnSmith.eth, (eth | btc | ltc | any crypto) → Your Wallet
Yourname.eth, email → YourName@example.com
Yourname.eth, ip→ 172.217.6.68
Yourname.eth, Social Network #1 → your username on Social Network #1
Yourname.eth, media → /ipfs/address-of-verified-photo-media
This is a LOT easier for users because the user only needs to know the domain name and the application can pick the correct lookup based on the context making it a one stop shop for users cross reference each other.
Additionally, because ENS is an open standard (indeed, you can roll your own naming service if you are so inclined) on a turing complete blockchain, developers can build on top and extend the usefulness of the applications. Here’s just a quick list of applications that may find integration with ENS as an attractive way to add value for their users:
- Authentication and ID
- Value add api’s on address lookup (i.e. is this a fraudulent address?)
- Credit scoring by name
- Search-> lookup and reverse lookup
- Media indexing and validation
There’s a lot of room for companies working on identity to allow authentication via a tie in to a decentralized naming service. Think Single Sign On with multiple different entities providing authentication methods unique to differing applications all tied back to a single user name. API’s to check for fraudulent activity on an address or to get a credit score could be tied into wallet and p2p lending applications. Search will expand as applications create ways to more easily on board new users (think FB authentication “invite your friends” as an open standard). Reverse lookup is also high on the list of potential applications as users list where to find their digital assets as part of their domain registry.
Naming has been and always will be a core service on any information network. An open standard allows easier bootstrapping for new application networks and increases competition between applications. The promise of blockchain based naming systems is that they allow users to own and manage their own online handles, allows usage across applications, and encourage future development that increases utility over time.
