ENS

mission & key concepts

ENS is a public good, a basic piece of Internet infrastructure that belongs to the community. Anyone and everyone is free to interact with the protocol as they are permissionless contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

Some key concepts from ENS constitution:

• Name ownership shall not be infringed
• ENS Integrates with the global namespace

ENS’s job is to map human-readable names like ‘alice.eth’ to machine-readable identifiers.

ENS has similar goals to DNS, the Internet’s Domain Name Service, but has significantly different architecture due to the capabilities and constraints provided by the Ethereum blockchain.

current challenges

ENS is DNS for the web3 space. ENS domains are a superset of DNS, allowing attaching human-readable names to websites. However, the use cases are virtually limitless, such as simplifying sending cryptocurrency, storing an avatar and profile information (think gravatar) that web3 apps will pick up and use automatically.

Another big focus is facilitating community engagement, build strong relationships with community members across a variety of platforms.

Things we’re working on for the foreseeable future:

• Expanding DNS namespace integration
• Scaling ENS records and subdomains
• Scaling DNS name importation
• Scaling .ETH name registration and renewal
• Upgrading ENS name control options
• Setting up and maintaining an ENS name NFT metadata service
• Redesigning the Manager App
• Upgrading reverse resolution registrar
• Massively expanding the number of services with ENS integrated
• Further decentralizing root governance

culture & values

TNL believes in hiring top quality talent and then giving them broad authority to move things forward as they see fit.

You will be working with a global team that has a myriad of backgrounds and experiences. People who have worked at the biggest tech companies and the smallest startups, crypto veterans and relative newcomers, colleagues who have been entrepreneurs in their own right and those who have worked in the public and private sectors.

history

Started at the Ethereum Foundation in early 2017, ENS spun off with a separate organization in 2018. ENS development is managed by the Singaporean non-profit True Names LTD and is a public good, a basic piece of Internet infrastructure that belongs to the community.

ENS in numbers:

• 2.17m Names
• 506 Integrations
• 541k Owners

core team

• Khori Whittaker, Executive Director
• Richard Moore, Advisor

To facilitate the possibility of upgrades and maintenance, the ENS root is controlled by a four of seven multisig, with members of related projects as keyholders:

• Nick Johnson, True Names Limited
• Sergey Nazarov, Chainlink
• Dan Finlay, Metamask
• Taylor Monahan, MyCrypto
• Aron Fischer, Colony
• Jason Carver, Ethereum Foundation
• Martin Swende, Ethereum Foundation