Blockchain technology is beginning to be used in more mainstream industries, including payments, gaming, art, and even social media. As a result, it is critically important to further simplify crypto’s user experience, starting with addresses.
It is essentially the addresses that we use to send and receive transactions on the blockchain that are how we interface with it. The numbers and letters are however combined into a long string of characters. The address of an Ethereum node can be represented as follows: 0x6405A46E53680Eae9cC8428ec3a459c3CEDD972.
Due to this, sending money to the wrong address is easy and can be very costly. It is also troublesome to use decentralized apps that require non-memorable strings to identify you.
Digital technology does not have any other aspect where the average person uses it on a daily basis in the same way. Consider Twitter without usernames, and the only way you could tag friends on online posts is by copying their Twitter user IDs. In that case, you were required to find and type in the IP address whenever you were visiting a website. In general, we’ve come up with ways to map memorable names to complex IDs. User experience is generally improved, errors are reduced, and communities can be created around an identity.
For this reason, I find the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) a very important project. An ENS name (ENS name) maps to your wallet address on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing you to map a human readable name to an Ethereum address. With this feature, when you get a memorable name, other people (and dApps) will be able to identify you more easily.
ENS names can be bought on the ENS App or from the secondary market if another user has already claimed it. Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) are what ENS names are, and so they can be traded on marketplaces like OpenSea. A similar process to bidding on a domain name on GoDaddy.
With an ENS name, you can:
- Receiving cryptocurrencies, tokens, or blockchain items (such as NFTs) with it. For instance, In lieu of a long address, you can send ‘teju.eth’.
- Your website should be linked to the ENS name. When using a browser that supports ENS, such as Brave and Opera, you can simply type your ENS name to directly access the site. You can open the website with a “.link” suffix in non-web3 browsers like Chrome. For example, ‘teju.eth.link’.
- By setting a reverse record, you will replace the wallet address with the ENS name.
- You can also include your Twitter handle, avatar, or email address in your profile. The blockchain will also display these.
Contents
This step-by-step guide can help you set up a reverse record for your ENS name.
Here are the things you’ll need:
- An Ethereum wallet that is non-custodial. I am going to use Rainbow’s mobile wallet as an example below.
- Your registration fee and transaction fees will be paid with this. Names that are 5 characters or longer are subject to a $5/year renewal fee. Names that are 4 characters or longer are subject to a $160/year renewal fee. Before starting the process, make sure you know what the gas fees are.
- In order to do so, you need Ether in your non-custodial wallet. It’s best to send it to a wallet you own first if you purchased it on an exchange. For instructions on transferring cryptocurrency from Buycoins and Coinbase, read on.
1st Step
Visit the app.ens.domains page. On the top left, click “Connect” and select your wallet of choice. For those whose wallets are not listed, click WalletConnect to see if they are supported. By selecting WalletConnect, you’ll receive a QR code that you can scan. Use Rainbow to scan the QR code by navigating to the ‘Discover’ page and clicking the QR icon. After it has been successfully scanned, you will receive a prompt to connect the ENS App to your wallet.
2nd step
Congratulations! You’re in! Find out if the name you want to buy is still available by typing in the name. If you wish to register it for a specific period (in years), you can do so. Once you do this, you’ll see a breakdown of both the gas fee and how much it’s going to cost. For this name, I was quoted $30.97 for a period of three years for more than five characters, but I paid approximately $25.
The third step
You’ll need to sign two transactions – one to request registration and the other to register. When you click the “request to register” button, Rainbow (or your wallet) will send you a push notification to confirm this transaction. You’ll see a small network fee on this page. $1.39 was the amount in my case. The wallet app usually suggests an amount you can pay based on how soon you want the transaction to get done. You can select a “slow, normal, or fast” transaction amount in Rainbow and most other wallets. Spending more money will make transactions go faster.
Your approval of the transaction will be posted on the blockchain and you will have to wait for it to be confirmed. After you submit a transaction in Rainbow, you have the option of speeding it up (by paying more gas), canceling it, or viewing it in Etherscan (a tool that lets you view your transactions on the blockchain).
Fourth step
In order to guarantee that no one else is trying to register that name during the same period, you must wait one minute following the confirmation of your transaction on the blockchain. Click “Register” to begin the second transaction once this checks out.
Once your wallet has sent you the notification, you will have to sign it. In this case, you will be able to see both the ENS name ($16.51 for three years) and the network fee. ENS will now be available in your wallet as a collectible once the transaction is confirmed.
The fifth step
The final step is to reverse the record. By doing this, decentralized apps will be able to recognize and display your address as your ENS name. Simply click the “My Account” link on the left and select the ENS name you wish to use for your address. The one you just bought is probably the one in your case. A second transaction must be authorized from your wallet to complete this process. Then, using the address that’s set for that app, decentralized apps can display your ENS alias.
Besides updating your record, you can also create other cryptocurrency addresses to link to your ENS name. Besides text records, you can also set up text records that can be accessed by the public.