You may have seen Ethereum Name Server domains like 0xjem.eth on Twitter recently. But what do they do?

Firstly, they’re aliases to wallets. If you want to send me a donation or an NFT, I could give you my wallet address as 0x12342069… This works fine, but addresses are unmemorable and easy to mess up when sharing. On the blockchain there’s no “return to sender”; it’s important to get them right!

It’s safer to say “you can send cool stuff to 0xjem.eth!”. Best-in-class Ethereum wallets like Rainbow resolve .eth domains & let you save your friends’ handles to a contact book.

ENS is much bigger than that, though. It allows you to attach other data to your domain—e.g. web links & social handles—like a decentralized business card. These can be viewed in the browser, or used by other applications to route requests.

The rabbit hole goes deeper still. In legacy social products, users can choose their own usernames, per-site. This creates a land grab whenever a new platform launches, and a fragmentation of identity across platforms when preferred usernames are not available.

When you “register” for most web3 services, your username will default to your wallet address - 0x12342069… Rather than repeating the mistakes of legacy tech, web3 sites can look in your wallet to find your ENS domains, and use them as your universal username.

ENS domains are the portable & decentralized future of identity. I strongly suggest you buy yours today.