A lot has been going on with Ethereum Name Service (ENS)!

We’ve been posting a lot more lately on Medium and Twitter about our progress, but since many people are busy buidling, they may not have time to follow everything. So we will periodically have posts like this that quickly summarize the main developments.

Permanent Registrar to launch May the 4th (be with you)

The current ENS registrar launched in 2016 was always meant to be temporary. With two years of ENS on mainnet under our belts, we’re ready to launch what we plan on being the permanent registrar.

You can read a fuller description here, but here are the main points: current ENS domain owners will have one year to migrate their domain to the new registrar; the auction will be replaced with an instant registration process; all .eth domains will have to pay yearly rent; and all domains will function like NFTs. (You can view the ConsenSys Diligence audit here.)

3–6 character domains to be made available later this year

So far, only +7 character .eth domains have been available for registration. In June/July, we plan on slowly opening up 3–6 domains.

First, we plan on having a reservation process, in which people can claim 3–6 character .eth domains if they already own the same DNS domain (it’s slightly more complicated, but you can read the details here). Second, we’ll have a temporary auction for initial allocation of popular short domains. Lastly, all remaining 3–6 character domains will be made available for instant registration.

More information about all of this will be forthcoming in the next few months.

Upcoming integration of ~1300 DNS TLDs on ENS

We’ve been testing DNS-ENS integration via DNSSEC with .xyz the last few months, and it’s gone great. So we plan on rolling out DNS integration with all DNS TLDs that have DNSSEC enabled (~1300).

This means anyone who owns a domain on one of these TLDs will be able to claim the same domain inside ENS and use it just like they would a .eth domain. For instance, ethereum.org will become a valid ENS domain, and once configured, a user could send funds to the Ethereum Foundation using ethereum.org just as they can today using ethereum.eth.

Rewrite and redesign of ENS documentation

You can find the new and improved documentation here.

Easier way to set ENS domains to resolve to IPFS/Swarm content

You can now use our Manager app to make use of our new standard for resolving ENS domains to IPFS/Swarm content.

ENS at hackathons and conferences

We want to get new Ethereum developers working with ENS starting with their first dapp. A great way to reach newcomers is at hackathons, so we’re proud to be a 2019 Season Partner for ETHGlobal’s hackathons.

We already had a successful run at ETHParis, with five winners of our special ENS prize. Our team also gave three talks on the current status and future of ENS at ETHcc earlier in the week.

We plan on being at EDCON’s hackathon and conference in April, and likely will be at many other events later this year. If you are at any of these events, please find us and say hi!

Opera integration, Brave coming soon

Opera now has ENS + IPFS integration! And Brave is adding it soon.

List of all our developer resources in one place

Thinking of integrating ENS? Here’s everything you might need in one place.