Introducing ENS Login
It’s no secret that the number of smart wallets has been exploding in the past year within the Ethereum space. With the launches of Authereum, Universal Login, Gnosis Safe, Argent, Abridged and more to come, there is a broad shift from standard accounts most dapp users are used to to smart contract based accounts that allow for easier onboarding, better security, and an all around better user experience. A growing number of options for users, however, presents a tough problem for dapp developers. Each dapp needs to decide which wallets to support for their users which means either presenting an ever growing list of options or picking the best wallets on their behalf. Dapps picking select options will limit user’s options and heavily favor current market leaders stifling innovation.
This is why we created an open standard for wallet integration that allows dapps to support any wallet with only a few lines of code. After several conversations with ENS’s Makoto Inoue ENS Login was first presented at the ETH Magicians discussion that occurred at MetaCartel’s Demo Day during Berlin’s incredibly energetic blockchain week.
ENS Login has gained support from teams including Portis and Universal Login with many other teams showing strong interest in joining the collaboration. We created a fully functional implementation at the ETHBerlinZwei hackathon joined by Hadrien Croubois from iExec who deserves some major recognition for his amazing development skills and Tom Teman from Portis who helped with many things including coordinating the collaboration between our two teams, writing up the documentation, and designing the logo.
ENS Login provides a simple widget and SDK that can be added to any dapp. It works by mapping users’ ENS names to a URL where their web3 provider can be loaded and used by the dapp without the dapp needing any knowledge of the specific wallet being used. This is an especially smooth experience for wallets that register ENS names for their users and will register their web3 provider as well because the user can start using ENS Login supported dapps immediately after registration.
While ENS Login started as a simple idea and hackathon project we hope to see it become ubiquitous across dapps to encourage a more open, decentralized, and collaborative Ethereum ecosystem. Stay tuned for a more technical write up of the concept by Hadrien Croubois and check out the implementation here. If you or your team are interested in collaborating on the development of ENS Login or want some help integrating it in your dapp, you can find me on Twitter @WhinfreyChris or join the Telegram here.
