Home
News
- 1 ENS protocol developers announce strategic plans to implement Layer-2 interoperability.
- 2 The integration strives to simplify user experience and increase accessibility of the Ethereum network.
In light of the recent news, Ethereum Naming Service (ENS) announced its plans to venture into the Layer-2 ecosystem. During a community call on Thursday, June 29, ENS Labs Ltd., the core developer team of the ENS, revealed their updated roadmap includes the integration of Layer-2 interoperability with the ENS domains.
The team recognized Layer-2 expansion as a significant upgrade to the ENS ecosystem. With this revolutionary initiative, ENS aspires to enable seamless interactions between existing Layer 2 solutions and ENS domains. Notably, this Layer-2 integration also aims to make operations like domain name registrations and transactions simpler and more accessible to a wider user base.
ENS’s Expansion to Layer-2 Interoperability
As the popularity of Ethereum reaches an all-time high, issues of high transaction costs, low accessibility, and network congestion are surfacing. This has prompted crypto users to steer towards economic alternatives like Ethereum Naming Service (ENS). ENS is a decentralized and extensible domain naming system built on Ethereum, having recently disclosed its plans for Layer-2 interoperability.
ENS serves as a tech-friendly link that makes the exploration of Ethereum-based web quite easy. Using this service, users can map simple human-readable usernames (ENS domain names) to machine-readable alphanumeric codes of their wallet addresses on Ethereum. This creates a more accessible and user-friendly Web3 identity for executing cryptocurrency transactions.
A well-known fact is that Layer-2 scaling solutions, (e.g., Arbitrum, Optimism) perform ‘off-chain’ transactions separately from the Layer-1 blockchain. These solutions reduce the load of computation from the Ethereum blockchain, and thereby, improve scalability, and reduce transaction costs.
During the call, ENS Labs highlighted the significance of this long-awaited move in enhancing the overall performance of the ENS domains. By implementing Layer-2 interoperability, the ENS team seeks to seamlessly integrate Layer-2 solutions with the ENS domains to address accessibility issues. ENS previously revealed this plan slated to be launched by incorporating ENS wildcard resolution (ENSIP-10) and CCIP Read (EIP-3668) for secure off-chain data retrieval.
As per the recent announcement, ENS developers plan to leverage off-chain resolvers by using different sources. One such source is ENS off-chain registrar contract, while the other includes partnerships with various service providers such as Coinbase (cb.id) and Optimism (OptiNames). With this, the ENS team intends to achieve close integration and in extension, a broader user base.
ENS Leading the Way with Gasless DNS Import
ENS works similarly to Internet’s Domain Name Service (DNS) as both endeavor to make their respective ecosystems more user-friendly. Like DNS, the ENS system works on dot separated hierarchical names called domains (e.g., username.eth) with domain owners exhibiting complete ownership over the subdomains.
In an attempt to bridge the Web2 and Web3 spaces, ENS Labs recently announced their collaboration with web domain TLDs (Top-level domains) like .box, .art. This major development allows Ethereum users to register domain names on ENS that are also DNS-routable.
The team members also discussed a new feature entailing gasless DNS integration into ENS using CCIP-Read. Through this feature, any user with a DNS name can import the same name in ENS by setting DNS TXT records without paying any on-chain gas fee. Scheduled to be launched during the third quarter of the year, the new feature is a key to enhance the accessibility of Ethereum and simplify user onboarding.
ENS recently achieved a milestone of recording over 2.2 Million domain registrations in 2022. As ENS’s popularity is rising persistently, currently, this figure is at a staggering 2.73 Million across roughly 700,000 unique addresses.
Moreover, to provide a more user-friendly experience, ENS created a new fiat on-ramp in April 2023. For this, ENS partnered with a Web3 Payment firm, MoonPay to enable users to utilize the web3 ecosystem seamlessly. The alliance allows users to purchase and register .eth domain names using fiat currency options like Google Pay, Apple Pay, debit cards, and credit cards.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
