Throughout the history of cryptocurrency, strings of letters and numbers have been used to receive money.

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In addition to receiving cryptocurrency assets from anyone, this wallet address has always been "0x318EB49A706b1c51be12f19016046f242b92264b" - there could be a loss of funds if any letter or number is omitted from this address, and it's very difficult to remember, so Ethereum Name Service has been created.

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With Ethereum Name Service, a long string of alphanumeric characters can be mapped to a human-readable name.

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You might be wondering, "What Is Ethereum Name Service?", and "How Does Ethereum Name Service Work?".

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What is Ethereum Name Service (ENS)

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Ethereum Name Service is a protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain to make decentralized transactions easy for everyday users. It's a distributed, decentralized naming system that enables people to give their name of choice to an Ethereum wallet address.

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The ENS is an Ethereum application that allows users to register and manage the namespace. It uses the Ethereum blockchain for its name management system.

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Simply put, users can map their wallet address with a human-readable name, and the domain name can be used to receive assets instead of the long-string alphanumeric.

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It's similar to Domain Name Service (DNS) —  a web 2.0 naming service, the difference is that Ethereum Name Service is built on an open source and decentralized network, the Ethereum blockchain.

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The main difference between the two naming services is that — DNS resolves IP address into a hostname, while ENS resolves crypto wallet address into a domain name. It can also be used to create a decentralized app domain name, and it also supports creating a decentralized domain that represents an existing web 2.0 domain name e.g .com, .org, .ng, etc.

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ENS aims to provide a mechanism for individuals or organizations to create human-readable unique names as well as a mechanism for registering those names in a global namespace.

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Let's have a glimpse into the similarity between ENS and DNS: 

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In the early day of the internet, websites could only be accessed by users through a string of dots and numbers called "Ip Address", always in the form of "192.0.5.4.9.54"

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This means that users need to remember these strings of numbers whenever they want to access the website where they want to get information, that's so tasking and complicated. 

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Hence, a domain name service was introduced, which enabled the IP address to be translated to human-readable language, e.g your-website.com.

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How Does Ethereum Name Service Work?

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Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a decentralized domain name system that allows users to register, manage, and resolve domain names. ENS allows anyone to register a ".eth" name on the Ethereum blockchain like how anyone could register a ".com" name on the Internet today.

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The domain name is used to represent the long wallet address of users, company/organization name, etc. The Ethereum Name Service comprises two smart contracts, Registry, and Resolvers.  

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A registry is the smart contract that owns the top-level domains (.eth) and controls the allocation of sub-domains, it has rules for anyone who wishes to obtain ownership of a domain name. It maintains all domains and subdomains.

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The Resolvers is the smart contract that now translates the domain name to the desired long-string address.

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How Do I Register My Ethereum Name?

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To register the desired name for your Ethereum address, below are the steps you need to take:

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• Create An Ethereum Wallet

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The first thing you need to do if you want to register an Ethereum domain name is to create an Ethereum wallet, this is necessary because the Ethereum address is what you want to map to a domain name, and this Ethereum wallet is what you will use to interact with the Ethereum Name Service protocol. You should ignore this step if you have an Ethereum wallet already.

Notable Ethereum wallets you could use are Metamask, Trustwallet, etc.

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• Fund Your Ethereum Wallet

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The next thing you would have to do is to deposit some ETH to your Ethereum wallet, as that's what would be used to purchase the .eth domain name, and also pay for the gas fee.

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• Auction For Or Buy .eth Domain Name 

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After funding your wallet successfully, the next step is to navigate to the Ethereum Name Service Dapp (https://ens.domains/) and connect your wallet. After then you will now search the domain name you wish to buy, and after you've purchased it successfully, you'll then map it to your wallet address, website, etc through the "Resolver".

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But if the domain name of your choice has already been taken, you can auction for it by bidding an offer for the domain name.

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When Did Ethereum Name Service Start?

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Proposed by Nick Johnson on April 4, 2016, and launched on May 4, 2017. This proposal came due to some of the roadblocks of Ethereum — with which a long string address that might be complicated is one of these roadblocks.

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The roadblock of a long string address that's used to receive ETH is not only about the probability of missing a certain letter or number in the address which could lead to loss of funds when receiving Ether, but it is also one of the factors that are hindering global adoption.

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Conclusion

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Ethereum Name Service is gaining more traction due to the sudden adoption of the development in the crypto space, and some Ethereum domain names were sold at a huge sum of dollars.

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As many firms, organizations, individuals, etc are transitioning into web 3.0, they would love to have this easy-to-remember domain name to use for most activities on the blockchain, thus Ethereum Name Service is considered to be the backbone of web 3.0 because of its intriguing features.

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