For over four years, the Ethereum Name Service has allowed domain registrations on the Ethereum blockchain. Launched in May 2017, the ENS now boasts more than 270,000 .eth domain names on its network.
The ENS creators have now announced a major milestone, which is to allow the old guard onto its shiny new network. In plain English, ENS is letting users add .com domains (and other extensions) to its network. DNS can be integrated into ENS.
Why would you do this? One of the main uses of Ethereum domain names at the moment is to transfer funds from wallet to wallet.
In the early days of the Internet, some sites were only accessible via IP addresses such as 17.254.3.255 until domain names allowed those websites to be visited by typing in something like apple.com instead.
It’s the same issue with cryptocurrency transfers from wallet to wallet. A long string of random characters as a wallet’s identifier is hard to remember and easy to get wrong. ENS has allowed a .eth domain to be attached to a wallet since 2017. Now, though, you can add your .com domain name, along with other active domain extensions, to the ENS.
Ethereum Name Services’ Brantly Millegan has published a useful guide to help you import your domain name to the Ethereum network. The step-by-step guide shows you how to complete the activation using a name registered to Google Domains, but the process will be very similar for other registrars such as GoDaddy.
While gas prices for completing this process could be high at the moment, there may be some individuals or companies that would find this beneficial, either from a vanity perspective or as part of a commercial venture.
You can read Millegan’s guide here.