The Ethereum Name System (ENS) is offering .ETH-adresses.
These adresses are getting connected with present existing public keys, allocated by a Smart Contract.
A Ethereum Public Adress is consisting of a fairly long sequence of random hexadecimal numbers beginning with 0x.
e.g.:
: 0xd208Aff7472557d1AEF8b1A76486C55598905656
As these Adresses are hardly ro remember and there is no checksum, it is quite easy to make mistakes on the input.
The Ethereum Name System is translating these randomly, according to specifications generated adresses into human readable references.
Everything is possible which includes at least 7 letters and ends on ".eth" or ".test"
e.g.:
expample.eth
https://ens.codetract.io/
What is ENS?
ENS is a decentralized name service on Ethereum, built using smart contracts. It enables the resolution of human readable addresses e.g. ethereum.eth into machine readable identifies. You can read more about ENS at their website, wiki and Github.
The ENS is NO fully qualified domain system !
It's not created by ICANN and is no real ".eth" top level domain in the World Wide Web.
.eth domains will be available exclusivly on Ethereum-browsers like :
- Mist( https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases),
- Parity (https://github.com/ethcore/parity) or
- Metamask(https://metamask.io/)
This is no organisation or institution, but a smart contract, which is running on the ethereum blockchain.
Consisting of 2 functions.
- a resolver, which translates the adress to readable conditions and
- a register, which lists the connection between adress/contract and the associated domain name.
Behind the ENS contract is a team of several developers from the Ethereum foundation. Seven of them are sharing the Masterkey with a multi signature process, which can edit the rules of the contract.
How are the adresses allocated ?
The registry-contract is allocating the adresses automatically according to certain Rules.
The adresses aren't sold or lent. Instead the interested party deposits a previously offered amount of ether.
It takes 5 days and includes several transactions in a splited auction process.
The User opens a public auction for the Name he wants to own. Everbody with interest can make a bit, by sending a special deposit transaction.
Afterwards the winner of the auction is owning the rights to use this domain, to create subdomains and to connect additional ethereum adresses (by holding the private key of the associated adress).
After 1 year the ENS-Domain-Owner gets the possibility to lead back the domain to the market and to unlock and withdraw the deposited Ether.
For now there are just a few Domains to purchase.
The ENS Team wanted to start with a soft launch, which is signed by the Root-Keyholders.
As result not every Domain Name will be available at the samt time.
In the Registrar-Searchengine you can see if a name is already available.
You can search and use the adresses with the "MyEtherWallet" online wallet.
More than 100 Domains are already allocated
- huffingtonpost.eth with more than 100 Ether.
- zhifubao.eth for 150 eth (zhifubao means "alipay", which is the "paypal" of china)
- bittrex.eth and bitfury.eth for 200 ether
....
The domain "exchange.eth" is at 6.600 Ether bid at the moment. (mozilla.eth at 200eth and foundation.eth at 200eth)
If you know what you are doing and you want to hold Ether anyway for at least one year, this auction is a nobrainer !
You could own a domain to use or to sell more expensive in the fututre. Or you can get your Ether back after 1 year.
The Process in detail is relatively complicated.
If you want to pariticipate it is recommendable to carefully read the conditions and instructions.
This a Smart Contract ! - which is great but should be treated with certainty !