The ENS Protocol
The Ethereum Naming Service or ENS is a naming protocol that maps human-readable names to blockchain addresses such as Ethereum wallet addresses, other cryptocurrency addreseses like Bitcoin, MATIC, BNB and hundreds of other cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, IPFS/Arweave/Onion decentralized content locations and more.
The ENS protocol is built upon the Ethereum blockchain and utilizes a set of smart contracts to manage and resolve names in a decentralized, secure and censorship-resistant manner. This allows users to register human-readable names(e.g. name.eth) and associate them with blockchain addresses.
Because of the global and immutable nature of the Ethereum blockchain, ENS names functionally serve as digital identities across the Internet.
What is a .eth Name?
All 2LD (name.eth) ENS names exist on the Ethereum blockchain as (non-fungible tokens)NFTs. A three letter TLD pattern is common with Internet domains and increases the potential for ENS .eth name integration with the existing DNS namespace.
In terms of traditional DNS domains, the .eth TLD is an existing but unused country code top-level domain or ccTLD. It has been reserved for the country of Ethiopia.
However, Ethiopia was issued .et as their country’s official ccTLD. The three-letter ccTLD of .eth remains reserved and unused since countries only use one ccTLD. Currently .eth names only exist on the Ethereum blockchain. They are not in use within the existing DNS top-level domain namespace.
The ENS Protocol for Global Public Good
ENS is a protocol founded and built for the global public good. It grew out of the Ethereum Foundation, and branched into its own project in 2017.
Founded by ex-Google engineer Nick Johnson, ENS aims to be the Naming System for every digital resource in the world.
It is important to note that ENS has not received investor funding, and The ENS Foundation is a non-profit company which began with the help of a $1M grant from the Ethereum Foundation. ENS is an open source protocol that allows anyone to register and use a .eth ENS name on the Ethereum blockchain.
DAO Governance of the ENS protocol
Name ownership of .eth names “shall not be infringed” as outlined in the ENS DAO Constitution.
Changes to the protocol occur in a completely decentralized way using tokenized governance voting. For instance, a change to the registration fee of .eth ENS names would need to be proposed and passed by in an on-chain governance proposal.
The ENS DAO is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization whose governance token, $ENS was used to ratify the ENS DAO Constitution and to enact other proposals that govern the protocol itself and allocation of DAO treasury funds. To see a list of past proposals, you can visit the ENS DAOs Governance Proposals archive.
Because voting takes place on-chain, the history of delegates who have voted on proposals is transparently available. For instance, Coinbase is a large ENS delegate of which you can view voting history on decentralized governance platforms like Tally.
ENS Integrates with the Global Namespace
The ENS protocol was built in mind to not collide with the existing DNS namespace, but in fact extend the functionality of DNS domains to the blockchain.
Article IV of the ENS DAO Constitution recognizes this in stating: "ENS aims to integrate with the legacy DNS naming system to the greatest extent possible without sacrificing decentralization of ENS"
DNS domains that have been ENS enabled are in fact ENS names with nearly all the blockchain functionality of native .eth ENS names.