We at ENS see the Ethereum Name Service as an integral part of making the Ethereum ecosystem more user-friendly. We have two complementary goals:

On the user side, we believe that in every instance a user might otherwise see an Ethereum address or content hash, they should instead see an ENS domain.

On the developer side, we envision a future in which ENS is not something your dapp might use, it’s something without which your dapp remains unfinished. (Who would make a website today and not use DNS?)

This means doing things like the following:

All wallets should allow users to input ENS domains (rather than only Ethereum addresses) in the “Send to” field for sending tokens.

All wallets should display an ENS domain as the user’s wallet address (via Reverse Lookup; and this should be done rather than showing an Ethereum address, which could still be accessed via an “advanced” option, or shown below the name).

Wallets and dapps can give users subdomains in the user on-boarding process to use as their username/wallet address.

All dapp contracts that users interact with should be displayed and used with an ENS domain.

Making your IPFS or Swarm content available via an ENS domain (which makes it accessible via an ENS+IPFS/Swarm compliant browser; e.g. Opera and soon on Brave).

Anything else you can think to improve UI!

And we want to do everything we can to help you make that happen.

In this post, we’ve compiled together our developer resources so you can easily take advantage of ENS in your dapp.

Our Resources

Upcoming changes to ENS

First, you need to know that ENS is upgrading. So here’s a brief heads-up regarding some upcoming changes:

We will be deploying the permanent ENS registrar on May the 4th (be with you). The new registrar will permit instant registration of domains, instead of the auction process. The new system will also have yearly rent.

We’ll then start slowly opening up 3–6 character domains, first with a reservation process, and then a one-off auction, finally opening all domains up for instant registration.

On top of all of this, we’ll be launching integration with around 1300 DNS TLDs soon! This means that, e.g. the Ethereum Foundation will soon be able to use “ethereum.org” to receive ETH.

Documentation

We just rewrote and redesigned our documentation!

It explains how and where to integrate ENS to help your users, which libraries support ENS, a glossary of technical terms, and more.

Our code

Of course, all of our code is open source and available on Github.

Get help and join the conversation

Ask questions and get live help from ENS developers in our Gitter channel.

Connect with other people building with ENS and keep up with the latest developments in our special ENS ecosystem Telegram group.

See our latest proposals and join the discussion about the future of ENS on our public forum.

Manager

We have a new ENS Manager web app!

You can use it to manage your ENS domains (set a resolver, create subdomains, et al), as well as to claim .test domains on testnets for easy testing.

You will also be able to use it to register new domains once we move to the permanent registrar.

Catch us at an event

Our team is present at many Ethereum events throughout the year, and we’d love to talk to you in-person.

We’re a 2019 Season Partner with ETHGlobal, we plan on being at the upcoming EDCON hackathon and conference, and we’ll have team members at many other events throughout the year, so please catch us and say hi!

Follow us!

Following our Twitter account and Medium blog are great ways to keep up on the latest ENS developments.

Email & Video Chat

If you’d like to email us or set up a video chat, we’d love to talk to you. Please contact us at brantly@ens.domains, and we’ll be in touch right away.

Together, we can make the Ethereum ecosystem more user-friendly!