Opera is a major web browser, with 182 million monthly active users (as of 10 months ago) and is the most used browser in about a dozen countries in Africa.

Which is why it’s exciting that they have added native Ethereum support with a built-in “Crypto Wallet” on both desktop and mobile! This has included ENS support, in two significant ways.

Name resolution to IPFS content in the browser

This is only available in the “Opera beta” app on Android right now, but it’s still a great development. (UPDATE March 30, 2020: This is now in the main production Opera browser on Android!)

In the web address field where you type things like “google.com,” if you enter a “.eth” name that has an IPFS hash in its ENS records, the IPFS content will be displayed as a normal website.

That’s right: decentralized name service (ENS) plus decentralized file storage (IPFS) equals decentralized web.

You can try it yourself. In the “Opera beta” app on Android, enter “game.portalnetwork.eth.” Here’s what you should see:

From the user’s point of view, it works just like a normal website, though what’s going on in the backend is very different.

You can learn more about hosting web content with IPFS here. You can learn about acquiring a .eth name here, and setting it up to resolve to your IPFS content here.

Name resolution to hex addresses in their Crypto Wallet

Their other use of ENS is in their Crypto Wallet and is pretty straight forward: when you are sending tokens, in the “Recipient” field instead of pasting in an Ethereum hex address you can type in an Ethereum name.

Notice that they leave the .eth name where you typed it, rather than replacing it with the Ethereum hex address, which they display below in smaller font instead.

This is a great example of good UI with ENS: it keeps the Ethereum name primary for the user, but also conveniently displays the Ethereum hex address if they need to double check it.

You can download and learn more about Opera on their website.

If you are a developer and are interested in integrating ENS, we have everything you need in one place right here.

If your dapp has integrated ENS in an interesting way and you’d like us to feature it, please send us an email at brantly@ens.domains.