When first jumping into web3, my journey began with research into hosting websites on the blockchain. I figured there had to be a way to store content on the blockchain, and not rely on a single point of failure in a server somewhere. There are ways to achieve redundancy and availability using services through AWS or CDNs. It’s kind of overkill for what I was trying to accomplish in the event I forget to pay for a cloud server or if my hosting company goes away.

Attendees of conferences are sometimes gifted an ENS physical badge that has an NFC chip. NFC stands for Near Field Communication. This technology makes it easy to share a POAP with others you meet in real like events. By simply holding a mobile device that is NFC capable, the POAP can automatically be issued. You can also showcase your online and on-chain persona in a single tap.

In this example, we will learn how to create a decentralized podcast using ENS and IPFS. You’ll be able to store and stream your podcast content from IPFS. Because IPFS is peer to peer, the hosting for your podcast will utilize decentralized storage instead of traditional web server storage solutions. In this way your podcast will not have any bandwidth or monthly download limits. You will also be able to give your users a podcast subscription feed link, so that they can listen through podcast apps like Apple Podcast. When a new episode is uploaded the podcast player and feed will automatically detect the new episodes.

In this guide, we will build a simple, easily updatable, and customizable blog website. It will be hosted on IPFS and linked to an ENS name. For this guide we will be using the Eleventy static site generator. The generator will output the entire website into static files that can be uploaded and ran on IPFS as a decentralized website. Using a static site generator is not required, but makes it easier to develop and make changes to your blog. You could also look for static template online and use a code editor like VS Code to make changes to the static files.

Decentralized websites function by having their content separated from a central server. Instead, the content is stored in a decentralized way on the blockchain. The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is commonly used to store decentralized website data. IPFS is a peer-to-peer protocol and facilitates the decentralized storing and sharing of data, ensuring it could be accessible even if the original publisher of the content goes offline. It functions much like peer-to-peer torrent networks, distributing data across numerous nodes, eliminating single-point failures.

In the traditional DNS system, the DNS root zone file is managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which is part of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

There are only two steps required to prepare a DNS domain for usage within the blockchain leveraging the ENS protocol. These steps are relatively straightforward for most users who may already be familiar with adding DNS records to their legacy domain names.

Traditional DNS domains do not work natively within the blockchain, however it is possible to “supercharge” a DNS domain name using the Ethereum Name Service(ENS) protocol as a bridge.

The following is a comparison of native ENS .eth names with DNS names that have been imported to ENS protocol. By utilizing the ENS protocol, it’s possible to extend DNS functionality into the blockchain. There are however some important differences that should be noted.

The ENS protocol continues to embrace forward compatibility with DNS to allow for wider web3 and blockchain adoption. Enabling a DNS domain to be used within the ENS protocol has seen considerable development changes since first introduced in 2017.