ENS...your private web3 address
No big deal, right? He commented that he uses the same function to open the front door of his house as well. If this all sounds foreign to you, here’s a quick primer on ENS, the Ethereum Name Service.
ENS is a decentralized system to assign names to addresses on the Ethereum blockchain. Traditional Ethereum wallet addresses are a random combination of 42 numbers and letters (hexadecimal) that represent the location of the wallet. These can be publicly shared, much like the address of a business or home. The private keys, much like the keys of a house, are needed to access anything in the wallet.
This is one of my wallet addresses: 0x7929fF721516111056b3b36259846F9B942400a9
Not too sexy!
Here’s the thing. I don’t need to use that 42-character mess any more because I purchased the ENS token, dside.eth, and assigned it to that address. Now if you want to send me ETH or USDC or DAI on the Ethereum network, all you need to do is address it to dside.eth and I’ll be there to accept it. (Thanks for your donations.)
Imagine you wanted to send a piece of fan mail to Jennifer Lopez...You would have to write out:
21 East 26th Street, Penthouse, New York, NY 13804.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could just send it to jlo.eth? (Sick townhouse by the way - and don’t bother her.)
What’s really cool about ENS is that the use cases are potentially endless. As web3 gets built out, more and more applications will utilize Sign In With Ethereum (SIWE).
You know how you have about a thousand username and password combinations for all the accounts you log on to daily? What if they all could be connected to one identifier - your ENS identity!
All you would need to do is log into your mobile wallet to access all your apps and accounts.
For security purposes, your login could be initiated by facial recognition, fingerprint or some other biometric identification.
In addition to the single sign-in convenience of SIWE, ENS can be a tool to differentiate the multiple identities many of us exist as today.
You may be the same person all day, but your digital identity is different at work, at home, and at play. For this example, these three identities can all be tied to one central identity and you can by known by different identifiers in your different living environments.
At home I’m DS1.eth, at work I’m DSide.eth, and at the ski mountain I’m GiantSlalom.eth.
My DS1 (home) account gets me in the front door, sets the lights and temp the way I want them, and stores all the data for my largest investment, my home, safely on the blockchain, accessible only through my hard wallet.
My work ID, dside.eth and sometimes dside.banklessconsulting.eth provides me with top tier access to the BC parking lot, executive cafeteria, and all my work tools I need to dominate in web3 consulting. I have one login for all the apps/tools I use for work via SIWE. My employer’s cool so they pay the $19/yr for the registration and ownership of my banklessconsulting.eth subdomain. If I ever leave the DAO, I can continue to pay the annual subdomain registration fee if I choose to maintain that identity.
I go skiing on the weekends, so my family and I each have identities we use at the mountain. My ski handle, GiantSlalom.eth is attached to payment for my parking placard, our ski passes, my family’s lunches at the lodge, and après ski drinks at the bar. One wallet - safe and secure.
If I choose to be anonymous, I can be GiantSlalom to everyone at the mountain. There’s no need to check my credit, government ID, or credentials because any information tied to my ability to pay for the goods and services I’m buying are tied to my wallet and ENS address. It’s not my only wallet, so there’s no personal information attached to it that’s unrelated to my weekend identity and no work credentials, unless I choose/dare to combine my worlds.
This morning I saw a tweet for a tool that allows you to privately send/receive email directly to your ENS address. Eventually, you will have one address for everything. Imagine that, your email, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, website, wallet….all in one place, connected to one .eth address.
I know this can be confusing. “First you said ENS is awesome because you can have different identities. Then you said it’s all in one place. Which one is it DSide?”
Isn’t it obvious - it’s both! Whatever or whoever you are at any moment, you have one identity, consolidated into one ENS address. In the morning I’m DS1.eth on all platforms. During the day it’s DSide.eth on all platforms. On the weekends you can call me GiantSlalom.eth.
Identity and anonymity. Free and secure. Organized and flexible.
Please comment and share.
More ENS resources:
Register domains - ENS Domains
Additional ENS Use Cases
@nickjohnson on "ENS as the naming system of every digital asset in the world”