Registering an ENS : For Noobs
The Ethereum blockchain has brought about many changes, for better or for worse, but along with it came pesky, long lines of gobbledygook used as addresses for our wallets. A regular crypto expert may not bat an eye when seeing them, but a novice like me may get a heart attack when seeing the freaking long address which I need to send my ETH to. Fear not,my fellow CKs (Crypto-Kakis), for there is now a simple solution to making a much simpler, more readable and unique address.
What is an ENS?
An ENS is basically an address on the .eth domain which you can fully customize to your needs. Think of it as the name given to your very own wallet. Imagine if you were called 22334 or 44313 instead of Ahmad, Chong and Muthu (forgive the generic Malaysian names), life would get very hectic and confusing since everyone seems to be named rather similarly. For example,
Ethereum Address : 0xacF3Be58d7d5e4B0be4A08dA67fdD2420cA5BD65
As opposed to,
ENS Address : Timothy.eth, Ali.eth
What is an ENS used for?
An ENS has many other uses which are probably more on the technical side, but for the regular user, it is used mainly to create user-specific addresses for public viewing. With the birth of contactless payment, crypto and other online wallets are becoming more and more popular.
A regular ETH address has two problems, which are
- its hard to remember and even harder to type in manually.
- higher chance of messing up the address (as we all know if you send crypto to a wrong address you can’t get it back).
Therefore, with an ENS, you can now display an easier to remember and type address which can be displayed when accepting payments in ETH or asking for tips when busking.
So with further ado, let us proceed on the actual steps to create YOUR latest and best marketing tool.
Step 1:
Go to https://app.ens.domains/.
Click the “Connect” button to connect your wallet.
This page will then show up and you can connect to the wallet of your liking. If you really do not know what a crypto wallet is, do check out this article on wallets before proceeding
Step 2:
Type in your desired domain name to check if its available.
If it is available, this page with a card with a green tip will show up.
Otherwise if you see a card with a grey tip show up, *sad doge noises*, someone else has already registered for the domain name , jadi siapa cepat dia yang dapat (loosely translates to “first come first serve”).
Step 3:
Once you have found an available name to your liking, click on the card and this page will appear.
This page is quite self-explanatory but I will further dissect it. Besekeli, you need to pay two fees :
- the first one is the price for the ENS itself and the rates are stated by the official ENS site.
- the next is the gas price which varies with the price of ETH.
Once you have made your decision and ensured you have enough money in your wallet, click the “Request to Register” button.
After that, confirm the Ethereum Transaction that pops up.
Wait a full minute for the transaction to be approved and also for the system to check that no one else has registered the name.
After that is done, you will be able to press the “Register” button.
The final, final step would be confirm one last Ethereum transaction. This confirmation part is where the fees are deducted from your wallet, so pay close attention to the transaction.
Once this transaction is completed, voilà! You are now the proud owner of bosskurr.eth or nasilemak.eth.
How to Set and Reverse Records
Here comes the part which we have all been waiting for, how to actually set your ETH address to the new ENS you have just bought and vice versa.
As you will notice, when you search for the ENS name you have just registered again, the colour at the tip of the card is blue. This means that you are now the owner of that ENS.
Now then, a little elaboration on what reverse records are. Reverse records are where a specific ENS or ETH address will point to. For example, when you just bought an ENS, you definitely want it to point to your ETh address and vice versa since it is not automatically set.
To do that, click on the “My Account” button.
You will be met with this page. Simply click on the “Select your ENS name” textfield and you will be able to choose the ENS you have just registered.
Click the “Save” button.
Confirm the Ethereum transaction that pops up. This one makes the changes official on the Ethereum blockchain, therefore gas fees are required. And boom, your long ETH address is now a shorter, much simpler text.
Additionally, you can scroll down and click on the respective ENS you have registered to further customize and see their details.
Here, you can set the registrant, controller and other addresses for other coins which you want the ENS to point to.
Some explanation :
- The registrant is basically the owner of the address the most powerful admin. You can transfer the ownership by clicking on the “Transfer” button.
- The controllers are people who have access to the address, and do things like add sub-domains. You can add more controllers by clicking on the “Set” button.
- The resolver is basically what maps addresses and ENS together so we can just leave it at the default resolver.
- Also, do take note of the expiration date, if you want to continue keeping the ENS.
As one final check that everything is working, you can go to Etherscan to check whether everything is in order by searching both addresses.
As you can see, both my ETH address and my ENS point to one another so I know that my registration is successful.
TL;DR
An ENS is a customized version of your wallet address which people can use to transfer funds to you. Just go to https://app.ens.domains/ to mint one. What are you waiting for?
