[Music]
[Applause]
good morning everyone how's everyone
today
good my name is Jeff LA and I'm a
co-founder of En traditionally this talk
is done by Nick Johnson but sadly he had
not make it here today out to Thailand
so instead I'll be talking to you
instead the last time I did an ens state
of ens talk was in 2018 at Prague who
here hands up who here was at Devcon 4
Prague wow wow that's actually more than
I thought at that time 5 years ago we
were exploring the permanent registar
and migrating from the vicory auction to
the commit reveal registration of today
since last time so much has changed and
I'll be talking about some of those
things
today so who here has heard of ens
right that's pretty much everyone that's
good that's good um vitalic said this in
2024 en is our most successful
non-financial application on ethereum
and and I'll go into a little bit of
what ens is for the very few people out
there who don't know what it is so ens
is a user experience protocol and that
means we put users first and that has
multiple meanings we Endeavor to create
the best user experience to make the
blockchain easier to navigate we want
our users to be a control of their
identity creating true trustless
ownership and the protocol is built to
be credibly neutral and permissionless
so anyone anywhere can use
ens 's humble beginning started with
trying to solve one of the innate
weaknesses of blockchain
everything is a long number in
hexadecimal and it's completely
unreadable so really how are we supposed
to scale to billions of users if the
first thing they do they see when they
create a wallet is see
this ens helps you turn that into
something humans understand a name the
Simplicity of a name is familiar to all
of us as soon as we are born we are
given a name and it forms part of our
identity whether that large number
sometimes called a hash represents your
identity on ethereum a decentralized
website or something else a name is an
order of magnitude more meaningful to
people and ens serves humans not
machines ens has several core principles
that make our protocol user Centric it's
decentralized meaning no single person
or entity controls the levers and
buttons that govern the protocol it's
permissionless so anyone can register a
name name and create an identity without
having to State who you are or where
you're from and lastly the protocol
itself is built to be credibly neutral
this means we're doing our best to not
have codified privilege actors in the
system okay definitions out the way
let's talk about the year so far and
we've had a really great
one if you put all of the ens
registration durations end to
end you'd have to start 9 million years
ago
in the late Meine Epoch Earth was a wild
range real realm of change saber-tooth
tigers stalk sprawling grasslands while
Earth early elephants thundercross open
savanas and despite an abundance of
large sharp teeth nobody was trying to
sell D Coin to
anyone so more seriously though it
illustrates we're Brewing pretty damn
well here's the basic stats nearly 2
million e names 900,000 users of which
nearly 200,000 have set up decentralized
profiles for themselves which you can
view in ethereum F
protool but ens was not only about
eth a trer picture of 's popularity has
to take into account the enormous number
of names using one of our many many
partner Integrations and many of these
are completely trustless and cost
free linear Bas and uni all have
released subdomain registrars this year
linear has completely trustless on
linear L2 using State proof on L1 for
ccip CCI read verification Bas has them
also stored in L2 but uses signature
verification and uni. E has them
completely offchain and verified using a
signature this really shows the
progressive decentralization of
subdomains that can start simple and
gradually be made trustless using l2s
and a state state proof with ccip
read and lastly the, Guerilla coinbase
as of today coinbase reports they've
issued over 12 million cb. ID names
their
users this marks the largest deployment
of es names to end users since we
launched and really demonstrating the
value of rolling out ens infrastructure
to absolutely
everyone and that has really been the
theme of the past year or more bringing
ens to more people more affordably and
with less knowhow required ccip read and
offchain names have been the foundation
of that and have to have led to a number
of hugely successful Integrations almost
16 million active names more than 14
million more than do e names that exist
around 10 million users and over 400,000
decentralized profiles do eth only
paints a small picture of the success of
ens but if you include all of our many
partner Integrations you'll really see
how wide ranging ens truly
is but ens is not only about subdomains
our success is widely how widely
integrated we are allowing names to be
used out in the wild Integrations are
one of the most important success
metrics for ens imagine owning a Visa
credit card but no one accepts Visa this
is the problem we need to tackle by
bringing large Integrations that all
allow the use of ens with the within
their existing users allowing ens name
resolution to exist outside of our Echo
chamber and this year has been a
fantastic year for Integrations and I'd
like to tell you about a few of them
today but first while not an integration
specifically I'd like to quickly
highlight gasless DNS SEC one of our
biggest technological advances in ens to
date we've supported DNS top level
domains inside ens almost since day one
but importing one came with a
substantial fee gasless DNS set combines
our trustless DNS import functionality
with the Gateway architecture of ccip
read and makes it possible to make
nearly any DNS name function inside ens
without transactions or gas fees
whatsoever and one of the first to use
the the power of gases DNS SEC was
GoDaddy GoDaddy added built-in support
for every name registered through them
removing the usability barrier of
understanding how to set up DNS SEC and
you can set up your DNS name to work in
ens using GoDaddy in just a few clicks
GoDaddy has over 80 million user names
registered with them 20 million
customers and just as one integration on
it own vastly improves the network
effect of
ens in collaboration with 3dn dobox is
the first truly blockchain native fully
ens enabled dnst TLD dotbox
registrations are all recorded on
ethereum and do every dotbox name is
automatically ens
enabled it's not just the main related
nanies that are integrating us though
bitwise a traditional Finance Company
who released their ethereum ETF product
this year has created ens subnames for
each of the addresses that hold the eth
back in the
ETF this is a great use case and that
hopefully makes tracking custody of
Unchained assets more transparent and
more
auditable payment providers have started
to adopt ens2 most notably PayPal and
[Applause]
VMO they rolled out their en support for
their crypto wallets to all us users
users earlier this year VMO has 90
million us users and PayPal has over 400
million accounts globally and this
really shows how ens is really super
wide ranging and going to millions and
millions of
users and lastly can you really say your
successful protocol until Google
integrates
you today you can search your e name on
Google and it will automatically show
you your balance and your resoled
address Google is the gateway to the
internet and Ian has become important
enough to be integrated into the most
used search
[Applause]
engine so what do these large
Integrations bring to ens well
subdomains means more users more people
using ens for the first time and
broadening The Social Network ens
creates large Integrations like PayPal
VMO and Google means there are more
places for ens to be used
making ens fundamentally more
useful in the same thing we've also been
pushing forward L2 ux with some eips in
the pipelines the first of which is ERC
7785 that will enshrine ens to be the
name Nam space to allow discovery of new
l2s in the future we hope to push
further eips that help the
fractionalization of L2 addresses and
address this problem headon ens works on
these problems because of course self
selfishly it helps ens proliferate but
selfishly it also helps the entire
ethereum ecosystem as
well born out of ethereum we as en have
never forgotten Our Roots all the values
that have come out of them ethereum is
not just in our name but in the DNA of
En
itself for seven years primary names
have only existed on L1 which limits
their use to people who are willing to
pay ethereum gas fees
being able to set a primary name on any
chain effectively for free will be a
huge unlock for the web through ux and
this is the first example of a more
flexible contract that will be seen to
me broadly in ensv 2 which was announced
in May and marks the first time that any
enss contract will it be officially
deployed to L2 and I'm proud to announce
that primary names are coming to L2 and
are available on test Nets today
reverse registrars are smart contracts
that power L2 primary names are live
today on a handful of test Nets and
should be com to main net by the end of
this year and to be clear there's
nothing for developers non-developers to
do this time but if you're a developer
you can go to test Nets today and play
around now things have really changed in
the last seven years I mean look at our
old 2017
logo l2s are the norm now and smart
contract accounts are common place gas
prices are fluctua fluctuating and it's
not sustainable to stay on L1 anymore
more in may we talked about moving to L2
driven by several key reasons the first
is reducing the overall cost of
interacting with
ens the second is reducing the number of
transaction in all possible
situations and the last is we want to
let all users transact from the chain of
their choice without the need for on and
off Rams that can make L2 so painful
with these ux goals in mind we are
aiming to make a true Improvement to ens
ux without the usual trade-offs
and with that on Monday at frns day we
announced our plans to build our own
chain which we're calling name
chain name chain is built on a few core
things that are really important to us
ANS today zi EVMS are the only way to
get transaction finality in a reasonable
amount of time and because ens is one of
the only application that requires
reading state from L1 we need the
fastest finality we can to ensure that
everything can be contrust thisly read
from other
l2s ZK EVMS use ZK proofs to prove the
correctness of a state transition on an
L2 and Commit This to L1 the ens
resolution process can then use ccip
read to verif verify the data from name
chain contrasting this to an optimistic
rollup the industry standard would
require us to wait 7 days before our
name can be in
use the second is of course the stack
must be complete open source all
allowing to be easily audited edited and
fought if
required and lastly we care about the
credible neutrality and decentralization
of ens and maintaining that is a
priority we're exploring whether shared
sequencing or base sequencing makes
sense for us at name chain as for
decentralization is non-negotiable for
us we're going to be building L2 to L2
bridging right into the protocol so you
can do things like commit whilst you
bridge and pay from your preferred L2
this will allow you to start your ens
Journey from any L2 lowering the Barrow
to entry when you buy your first name
and this is one of the primary reasons
we wanted to launch our own Chain versus
deploying to another public chain being
able to control the entire stack from
protal to governance means that this
rollup is here to serve ens and
naming this is super important to us as
we are ens are committed to being L2
agnostic name is the L2 we're building
but we're not just building an L2 ens V2
is a complete ground up redesign of ens
and only one component of that is having
a dedicated L2 it's designed to be more
flexible more accessible and more
affordable so we continue the momentum
started with ccpi ccpi read and offchain
names and expand its utility to every
user and application that needs
it so how are we going to do that well
first we've redefined how names are
registered and recorded with a
completely redesigned
registry second do e names will be
recorded and by default hosted on our
dedicated L2 name
chain and finally a user-driven
migration with backwards compatibility
and let's explore these in a bit more
detail e on name chain means that all
registration renewals will no longer
live on ethereum L1 but instead on name
chain storing it on name chain means
that registration renewal gas will be
significantly
lower although ethereum has its
conveniences it's not a long-term
solution for gas prices on L1 having
registration name chain means we can
ensure registration gas costs as close
to zero as
possible however even though e names
will move to name chain name resolution
largely remains untouched and begins
from ethereum
itself let me reiterate that ens
resolution reading from ens names
remains anchored on L1 and that is a
fundamental difference between ens and
other protocols moving to L2 we do not
fractionalize our protocol we connect it
together and remain as one and this is
how we remain L2
agnostic L2 was a L2 support was a
consideration for the beginning of the
design process of V2 and that means we
can also deploy the V2 contracts to L2
networks combined with ccip read this
makes it possible to seamlessly stitch
together a coherent name space from m
multiple distinct networks and l2s this
architecture reinforces how we are
staying L2 agnostic beginning everything
from L1 but only moving eth to name
chain while supporting ens on other
l2s okay let's talk about the complete
technical rewrite of the ens
registry Registries are contracts that
store data about that name the current
registry stores the owner and resolver
records and currently all names are
stored in a single flat registry this
design is straightforward but also has a
couple of significant drawbacks one of
which that is difficult to find custom
rules for name issuance and ownership
another is that because each name exists
independently in the registry when a
name is transferred or deleted all
subnames remain
unchanged we're solving both both of
these problems while adding more
flexibility to the system as a whole by
introducing a new registry design in EN
V2 in V2 each name optionally has its
own registry which deals exclusively
with its subdomains there's a root
registry which contains all the top
level names each top level name has a
registry containing all the second level
names such as nick. eth and so
forth using a hierarchy of Registries
has a number of advantages anyone who
owns a name can now Supply the registry
implementation of their choice giving
full control on how subnames are issued
and controlled this allows all the
functionality of the name name rapper
and more whilst preserving the
flexibility for name owners to set their
own rules ownership and even
resolution when a name changes hands or
if an owner wants to start from scratch
they can easily replace the registry
from a name
entirely erasing all existing subnames
allowing a very easy fuss-free way of
clearing up the hierarchy of your name
likewise because each registry exists
independently we can even insert
Registries at multiple places in the ens
hierarchy when you're ready to move from
a subname to an eth name of your own you
can bring everything with you while
still ensuring your old name functions
as it did
before in line with 's core principles
moving to V2 is an entirely user-driven
and optim process all registrations will
be transferred to the new L2 chain
because by its nature a registry has to
be stored all in one location but the
names themselves their records and
subnames however can continue to exist
on ethereum or any other L2 or offchain
storage
solution after launch users can migrate
their names to V2 with a single
transaction this will move the name from
The Legacy flat ens registry to new
hierarchical one at the same time they
can choose to either leave the name on
L1 or migrate it to name
chain and names that aren't migrated
will continue to function indefinitely
the new ens contracts are programed to
automatically fall back to looking up
names in the version one registry this
means that for names that owned by
immutable contracts or for users that
can't or won't upgrade functionality of
their name is safeguarded
forever it's been 7 years since the
Inception of ens Google VMO PayPal
GoDaddy wow we couldn't have imagined
seven years ago that we would get so
far and ens is ethereum aligned and
always will be that's why we always
enjoy coming and giving the state of ens
to Devcon every single year since Devcon
one or
two and L2 reverse registrars on testnet
today it's something we've been working
on for a little little while now and
we're really trying to bring the interop
into ethereum and that's really been the
the um the theme for this
Devcon and ens is expanding to name
chain but remaining on L1 whilst
remaining L2 agnostic and and ens V2
will improve the ux of ens across the
board for years to
come and lastly this talk was too long
to mention some of the amazing ens Dow
service providers this year we're not
the only ones building ens and it would
be impossible to expand to a billion
users without help to name a few first
the ethereum fell protocol is bringing
the social profiles of ens to the masses
Nam stone is pairing many of the
subdomain Integrations and unrug for
building the generalized gateways that
are powering ccip
read and of course my ens Labs team for
building everything that we've seen
today and supporting us today and for
years to
come and finally the adventure is not
over if you're looking for a position at
ens we're always looking for good people
so if you'd like to work for ens Labs
please check ens labs. org for job
postings thank you and enjoy your last
day at Devcon
[Applause]
all right thank you so much Jeff for
that I think that was fantastic so as
you can see here if you've already asked
your questions that is great uh what you
can do is you can also upvote a question
so if you really really want to have it
answered it can move up to the top of
the question so we're going to start off
with the first one what about privacy
using ens as a major privacy leag and
conducts a user sure I mean this is a
question we get a lot for us at en
and for us ens is a usability protocol
on top of ethereum and l2s and ethereum
and l2s have this issue regardless of
ens so obviously you need to practice
good obsc and make sure your address is
not linked and do the things that you do
to protect yourself for the addresses
having a name on it doesn't additionally
create less privacy so you obviously
need to create that good OBC no matter
whether you're using ens or
not all right and then we've got Google
integration ports. e domains but not the
corresponding subdomains why is that I
mean if anyone's from Google here can do
this we'd be it'd be fantastic if they
could um obviously eth is our Flagship
product Google really respects that and
wants to to do some Integrations and
starting with. e um but hopefully in the
future we can really push them to do
self-domains as well and if anyone has
connections at Google please talk to us
and we'll we'll try and get that
in okay remember you can still add some
more questions if you feel like none of
the ones that you have are on here we've
got can builders use name chain for
other stuff yes so as I said name chain
will be on a ZK evm most likely and that
means it's evm compatible so it's going
to be it's going to be a public chain
that anyone can use we're not going to
be you know permissioning the chain so
you can deploy your own resolvers
all right then at the top here we've got
what are some of the problems that stand
in our way to increase mainstream
adoption of iness I mean I think this
applies to all of ethereum and all all
of blockchain itself it's really about
um
getting improving our wallet user
experience having names and all of these
things to replace addresses and once you
do that you can get more blockchain and
ethereum support across the board you
know in your cafes um in your you know
paying for things dayto day and then
it'll be very easy to kind of improve
the mainstream ad doct of ens I believe
already ens is quite widely supported
across blockchain so it's really about
expanding the entire ecosystem itself so
ens can serve a larger ecosystem
all right can name chain be key store
rollup as well it is something we talked
about and I I don't think it's something
we have we can Ru out I think a key
store rollup would be absolutely great
um but obviously there are technical
difficulties to the keystore rollup as
well so if we can solve them for other
chains I'm sure we can do it for name
chain as
well all right we got one that just got
upvoted quite hard how will the ens
token be integrated with name chain
um that is something for Up For Debate
right now I believe the token is
currently on L1 and for now it will stay
on L1 um obviously this is discussions
about where we would put our Dow and
governance contracts but um yeah that's
still off of
discussion and then a few more questions
here how does ens compare with
unstoppable domains what do you guys
think how does ens compare with
unstoppable
domains I think we're doing pretty well
I feel like that one was definitely a
trap uh the next question when will the
ens manager app support efp oh we'll
have to talk about that
[Laughter]
bronley all right uh what has been the
greatest challenge for
en um the greatest challenge for
en oh there are many I think it probably
starts many many years ago and when
people didn't really believe that we
were a project worth supporting but I
think we've overcome that now and it's
really like a non-starter if your app
application doesn't support ens name so
I think just overcoming that just shows
we're here to stay and we're here to
help all of you Builders out here