DApp Spotlight: ENS Manager and DNS Support on Ethereum Name Service

Managing crypto funds and sending transactions involves a considerable number of unwieldy pieces of information: long alphanumeric strings, random word phrases, encrypted files and multiple passwords.

While these tools are necessary and complex for a good reason, they also introduce the possibility of error and loss of funds. Being off by just one character can mean that you’re sending assets to a stranger’s (or phisher’s) address, or losing access to your wallet forever.

Wouldn’t it be great if interacting with the Ethereum blockchain was as easy as emailing or visiting a website? It can be — in fact, that functionality is already available and you can try it out with MEW!

What’s ENS and why it matters

If you go to the DApps page in your wallet dashboard, you will see the ENS Manager. ENS stands for Ethereum Name Service — a secure and decentralized way to manage resources on the blockchain using simple, human-readable names that look like a website address.

Ease of use is just the beginning: the ENS is built using smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, so it doesn’t suffer the same vulnerabilities as DNS. You can be confident that your query or transaction will not be redirected to a phishing site without your knowledge. It’s decentralization, made convenient for the real world.

ENS domains

So how do you get on board?

In fact, you are already taking advantage of ENS and decentralized hosting just by using MEW5! MyEtherWallet can be accessed not just on www.myetherwallet.com, but also at http://myetherwallet.eth. To do this, you just need to have MetaMask extension installed, log in, and go to the .eth address.

Simple! The crucial difference is that you are visiting a site that is hosted in a decentralized cloud rather with an Amazon (or any other centralized provider) server that can be hacked or taken down.

You can use MEW’s ENS DApp to bid on your own ENS domain from right inside the wallet. At the moment, this is not the most straightforward process, but we have created some guides to help you through the bidding procedure — you can view the articles in our Knoweldge Base. Domain ownership and hosting is free (of course, you will still have to pay gas fees for transactions).

With our ENS Manager, you will be giving out your wallet address as pinkunicorns.eth* in no time.

*Disclaimer: we haven’t actually checked the availability of this domain — but you can!

Even Better: DNS support

What if you already have a domain? Maybe a blogging website, or a business? Now, you don’t even have to bid on a new .eth domain — you can get a DNS domain that you already own to be supported on ENS.

The official ENS blog has posted a set of instructions on how to claim your DNS domain on ENS. For now, only .xyz domains are supported on the mainnet Ethereum network, but you can already try out the procedure on the Goerli testnet with any TLD. Don’t let the instructions scare you away — MEW simplifies much of the process!

How To Claim your DNS domain on ENS using MEW

Follow the first two steps from the ENS post — they are copied here for your convenience (credit to Nick Johnson of The Ethereum Name Service).

1 . Setting up DNSSEC signing

Depending on your DNS provider, this may be really easy, or quite involved.

If your DNS provider already supports DNSSEC-signed domains, great! Follow their instructions for setting up DNSSEC.

If they don’t, you’ll need to migrate to someone who does. I recommend either EasyDNS or Google Cloud DNS. EasyDNS’s setup guide for DNSSEC is here, while Google’s is here.

Whatever provider you need, make sure you select RSA signatures and SHA256 hashing.

Once you’ve set DNSSEC up, your DNS provider will give you some data — DS or RRSIG records . You will need to provide these records to your registrar. Doing this lets them insert the relevant ‘glue’ to make sure everything works end-to-end.

When you’ve finished this step, use Verisign’s DNSSEC debugger to verify everything is working before going further.

2 . Adding a TXT record

The DNS Registrar on ENS looks for a TXT record with a specific name and format in order to verify what Ethereum address should be given ownership of the domain.

To claim ownership of mydomain.xyz, create a TXT record in your DNS zone, _ens.mydomain.xyz, with text data of the form a=0x1234…, where 0x1234… is the Ethereum address you want to give control of the ENS record to.

3. Claiming on MEW
(these are the steps diverging from Nick Johnson’s original instructions)

Access your MEW wallet, and navigate to the DApps page. Select ENS Manager. Enter the address of the domain you want to claim and click Check Domain.

If you completed steps 1 and 2 correctly, you should get a screen telling you that the domain is claimable. Click Claim, and you will be taken to a transaction confirmation. Make sure you have some ETH for gas. Confirm and Send.

Once your transaction is completed and verified, if you go back to ENS Manager and enter the domain address again to check it, you should get a screen indicating that it’s already owned. Check that the owner address is the one that you intended. That’s it!

We hope that you feel encouraged to try this out — it’s really one of the most exciting things in the Ethereum ecosystem today. Join the decentralized community and never copy-paste an alphanumeric string again!

Always here to demystify crypto,

#teamMEW

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