What Is ENS?

ENS, short for Ethereum Name Service, is a decentralized naming system built on Ethereum. It maps human-readable names such as alice.eth to long, machine-readable Ethereum addresses, content hashes, profile metadata, and other identifiers. Instead of asking a friend to send funds to a 42-character hex string, an ENS user can simply share alice.eth. ENS is widely supported across wallets, dApps, and block explorers, and has become the default web3 username for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Overview - Table of Contents
What Is ENS?
Getting Started With ENS
How To Get An ENS Wallet?
ENS Resources
How To Buy ENS?
Latest ENS News

ENS was created by Nick Johnson in 2017 while he was an engineer at the Ethereum Foundation. After a brief permanent-registrar redesign in 2019, ENS spun out into a standalone non-profit, True Names Ltd., and was governed by a small core team. In November 2021, ENS launched its governance token (ENS) and transitioned governance to the ENS DAO, distributing 25 percent of supply via an airdrop to anyone who had registered a .eth name before the snapshot. The remainder of the 100 million ENS total supply went to the DAO treasury and to contributors on multi-year vesting schedules.

Under the hood, ENS is a set of smart contracts on Ethereum. The Registry maps every name to an owner and a resolver contract; the resolver returns records such as the Ethereum address, content hash for IPFS or Arweave content, and arbitrary text records like avatar, email, and social links. Top-level domains such as .eth are managed by registrar contracts. The .eth registrar uses an annual rent model, where holders pay a yearly fee in ETH to keep their names, with revenue flowing to the ENS DAO treasury.

ENS supports more than just .eth. Through the ENS Name Wrapper and DNS integration, traditional DNS domains (like example.com) can be imported and used as ENS names, with the DNS owner controlling the corresponding ENS records. ENS also supports subdomains, which a name owner can issue freely (for example, pay.alice.eth, lend.alice.eth) and either control directly or delegate to third parties.

The ENS token is a governance asset. Holders vote on ENS Improvement Proposals (ENSIPs), elect stewards across three working groups (Meta-Governance, Public Goods, and Ecosystem), and direct the treasury, including grants to projects building on or around ENS. ENS holders can also delegate their voting power to other addresses, mirroring the delegate model used by Compound and other DAOs.

A major recent direction for ENS is Layer 2 scalability. ENSv2 plans to move the core registry to a Layer 2 (with Linea selected as the home for the canonical .eth namespace on L2) while preserving Ethereum mainnet as the security root. CCIP-Read and ERC-3668 already allow ENS names to be resolved from L2s and off-chain data sources, enabling cheap subdomain issuance and namespaces on rollups such as Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum.

Getting Started With ENS

The primary way to use ENS is to register a name:

Step 1: Visit app.ens.domains and connect an Ethereum wallet such as MetaMask or Rabby.
Step 2: Search for a .eth name that is available. Shorter names cost more per year; names of three or four characters carry premium pricing.
Step 3: Register the name by paying the first year's rent in ETH plus gas. You can renew at any time and can prepay multiple years in advance.
Step 4: Set records on your name: primary Ethereum address, additional chain addresses, an avatar (often an NFT), and text records such as your X handle or website.

Once configured, you can share your .eth name to receive ETH and tokens, sign in to web3 apps that support ENS, and host decentralized websites at your-name.eth via IPFS or Arweave content hashes.

How to Get an ENS Wallet?

The ENS token is an ERC-20 on Ethereum, and ENS names are NFTs (ERC-721) controlled by Ethereum-compatible wallets:

MetaMask

MetaMask is the most widely used wallet for ENS. It resolves .eth names automatically in the send field, displays your primary ENS name and avatar, and integrates with the official ENS app for registration and management.

Rabby

Rabby is a popular alternative wallet with strong ENS support, transaction simulation, and multi-chain features that work well for users managing names across mainnet and L2s.

Coinbase Wallet

Coinbase Wallet supports ENS resolution and is a common choice for users who want a mobile-first wallet that pairs with an exchange account.

Hardware Wallets

For long-term storage of valuable ENS names or large ENS token balances, Ledger and Trezor hardware wallets work seamlessly with MetaMask, Rabby, or Frame, keeping keys offline.

ENS Resources

How to Buy ENS?

ENS is listed on most major centralized and decentralized exchanges:

Centralized Exchanges

ENS is available on Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, Gate, KuCoin, and others. Common pairs include ENS/USDT, ENS/USDC, ENS/EUR, and ENS/BTC.

Decentralized Exchanges

ENS trades against ETH and stablecoins on Uniswap on Ethereum mainnet, where it has the deepest on-chain liquidity. DEX aggregators such as 1inch and CowSwap will route across pools automatically for best execution.

Owning ENS tokens grants governance rights but is not required to register or use a .eth name. Many users hold a small position to delegate voting power to a steward team they support.

Latest ENS News

The most consequential recent direction for ENS is ENSv2, a multi-year effort to move the canonical .eth namespace to a Layer 2 (Linea) while keeping Ethereum mainnet as the security root. The redesign aims to dramatically lower registration and management costs, support cheap subdomain issuance, and unify ENS across rollups. Existing names will continue to work; the migration is designed to be backward-compatible.

ENS has also seen continued integration with mainstream wallets and Ethereum L2s, and the DAO has remained an active funder of public goods and open-source tooling. Following the ENS governance forum and the official X account is the best way to keep up with ENSIPs, steward elections, and treasury updates.