How to avail an Ethereum name through the Ethereum Name Service.

Opening remarks

The blockchain technology has developed cryptocurrencies along with many and other industrial domains. The cryptocurrencies are secured with the amazing cryptographic principles, which in turn contains sets of confusing strings that need to be remembered in the form of public or private keys. Therefore, recalling those public addresses each and every time, while initiating any kind of transaction is highly challenging. Especially, in the case of the Ethereum network, as there are provisions available even for the Decentralized Applications and Smart Contracts. The complexities, in this case, are increased by a number of folds and therefore needs special attention. Intelligently, the experts are trying to attach domain names to each and every address through a decentralized initiative discussed below. Let’s understand Ethereum Name Service and its usage.

The Ethereum name service Dapp

Widely popular as Ethereum name service is the paradigm incorporated by the experts in order to eliminate the need of remembering long hexadecimal addresses. By utilizing the amazing functionalities provided by the service, one can send Ether to anyone across the world by using their Ethereum name instead of the complex and ambiguous hexadecimal address. For example instead of remembering the address, ‘0x4cbe5826c0480…’ one can easily replace it with ‘tonystark.eth’. This link establishment between two entities is nothing but Ethereum name service and one needs to buy Ethereum names for their respective addresses, as there might be a lot of competition for the same Ethereum name.

What is Ethereum name service actually?

ENS is nothing but an Ethereum based Decentralized applications which launched its main net in May 2017. The decentralized applications offer Ethereum name service which absolutely functions with the assistance of smart contracts. In brief, the ENS, abbreviation of Ethereum name service, has similar goals to that of the Domain name service of the internet but is completely blockchain-based with a different set of capabilities and requirements.

Understanding the process of Ethereum name service

Series of steps must be followed by a cryptocurrency enthusiast, in order to obtain the Ethereum name for the wallet or Smart contract. Ethereum name service is obtained by the users through an auction process. The auction process applied, in this case, is a Vickrey auction process. It is nothing but a variant of sealed bid options where the bidders bid a certain amount on a particular Ethereum name without actually knowing the bid amount of other bidders. In this way, the users are open for an opportunity to bid and avail a precise value of the commodity. The steps to avail Ethereum name service is explained below.

1. The first step of the auction, the user bids a certain amount on an Ethereum name that he/she wishes to buy. This process triggers a three-day window time frame. The Other bidders within the community can bid their respective amount on a number of Ethereum names of their choice within this three day period. It is worth mentioning here that none of the bidders knows about each other, the amount, and the Ethereum names they are betting on. In simple words, the process is completely anonymous.

2. After the first step of obtaining an Ethereum name service is completed reveal period of 2 days is put forth before the bidders when they need to reveal their respective biddings. It is important to reveal their biddings and if they fail to do so, it would result in the complete loss of their amount.

3. After a waiting period of 2 days, the highest bid wins the competition and has to pay the second highest amount, and all the remaining bidders who had revealed their biddings would receive back their amount with a deducted fee of 0.5%. As the whole system is powered by Smart contracts, the funds of the winner are stored in a smart contract until he/she is under the control of that particular Ethereum name.

Interestingly, the winner can hold the Ethereum name under the control and when released back to the ecosystem can avail their complete amount refunded back.

Interfaces offering the Ethereum name service

In order to facilitate, the ease of using the Ethereum name service a number of initiatives have been proposed which can be approached to obtain Ethereum names. Some of the most popular ones which assist the users in utilizing the Ethereum name services are as follows.