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by chrisco255 1656 days ago
ENS (Ethereum Naming Service) is built on immutable smart contracts on Ethereum. Domain names (ie example.eth) are permissionlessly registered for up to hundreds of years at a time for ~$5 a year.

ENS domains can be resolved to Ethereum wallet addresses, IPFS, Bitcoin addresses or any other public key or string.
1 comments
rvz 1656 days ago
ENS seems to be centralized on to one smart contract holding all the domains under the .eth TLD (which already conflicts with the reserved 3 letter TLD for Ethiopia) under the control of a typical 'multisig' and 'DAO' which is based on 'trusting' the keyholders.

Basically ENS boils down to being a subdomain provider with ICANN-like governance, an illusion to 'decentralization'.

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chrisco255 1655 days ago
It's not one smart contract, it's actually many smart contracts and many open-source front-end components: https://github.com/ensdomains

The three letter code is not currently used by Ethiopia (they use .et and .com.et), and the ENS team is in negotiations with Ethiopia for the 3 letter TLD: https://www.olipso.com/en/domain-search/ethiopia https://twitter.com/BrantlyMillegan/status/14632165646149672...

The contracts themselves are immutable. ENS domains are NFTs. You should read the code and understand the actual structure of it before criticizing it.

https://docs.ens.domains/dapp-developer-guide/ens-as-nft

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rvz 1655 days ago
> The three letter code is not currently used by Ethiopia (they use .et and .com.et), and the ENS team is in negotiations with Ethiopia for the 3 letter TLD

Did I say 'used'? I said 'reserved' and the ENS team knows it is 'reserved' FOR Ethiopia, otherwise why are they negotiating specifically with them in the first place?

Relying on 'trusting' a so-called 'DAO' with all .eth domains sitting under the root multisig control is no different to trusting a subdomain provider with ICANN-like governance but this time, they're using a 'blockchain'.

All of the above sounds like a great 'illusion' to decentralization. I expect ENS to be no different to ICANN governance given that they can have full control over any of the domains on the ENS root. [0]

[0] https://docs.ens.domains/frequently-asked-questions#who-owns...

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