The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a distributed naming system built on the Ethereum blockchain, started in 2017 under Nick Johnson, then at the Ethereum Foundation. Today ENS Labs leads development, while the ENS DAO governs the protocol.
ENS maps human-readable names such as 'alice.eth' to machine-readable identifiers like Ethereum addresses, other crypto addresses, content hashes and metadata. Its main purpose is to spare users from handling long, error-prone wallet addresses.
Like the internet's DNS, ENS uses dot-separated hierarchical domains, and a domain owner controls its subdomains. For example, the owner of 'alice.eth' can create 'pay.alice.eth' and configure it freely.
Top-level domains such as '.eth' are owned by smart contracts called registrars, which set the rules for allocating subdomains. ENS also supports reverse resolution from address to name and importing existing DNS domains.
Data provided by CoinGecko
The ENS governance token launched in November 2021 with a fixed total supply of 100 million, part of which was airdropped to existing name holders. Holders vote on DAO proposals, including how treasury funds from registration fees are used.
In February 2026, ENS dropped its planned Namechain layer 2 and chose to stay on Ethereum mainnet, citing much lower gas costs. In October of the same year, ENSv2 went live on mainnet with individual registries for subnames, and existing names keep working without re-registration.
ENS is supported by many wallets and decentralized apps, making it one of the de facto standards for Web3 identity and address naming. Its open design lets anyone register names under the rules and build extensions.
However, names must be renewed periodically and can be lost if renewal lapses, and lookalike names create impersonation and phishing risks. Governance debates over DAO decentralization and foundation structure are also ongoing, so a balanced view is warranted.
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