FAQ
ENS is supported by a wide range of wallets and dApps, some notable ones can be found on the integrations page. This page is currently under construction however a link to add yourself will be put here soon.
Yes, you can hold your name with one address and point it at another. Simply visit the ENS Manager App and update the appropriate address record (by chain) for your name to point to the address you wish.
Yes. You can create whatever subdomains you wish and assign ownership of them to other people if you desire. You can even set up your own registrar for your domain.
Some resolvers might provide even more advances features, read more about Resolvers.
Yes, you can update the addresses and other resources pointed to by your name at any time.
To update your name checkout the ENS Manager App.
Hashes provide a fixed length identifier that can easily be passed around between contracts with fixed overhead and no issues passing around variable-length strings.
Read more about labelhash, namehash, and encodings.
ENS names are generally encoded using UTS-46. This means there is partial support for Unicode characters, including emoji.
However technically possible to register any name, names that are not valid UTS-46 will not be resolvable by most resolvers. Therefore it is generally recommended for apps that implement registration to limit the characters that can be registered to ensure a smooth experience.
To read more about supported characters name normalization.
Currently, registration costs are set at the following prices:
- 5+ character .eth names: $5 in ETH per year.
- 4 character .eth names: $160 in ETH per year.
- 3 character .eth names: $640 in ETH per year.
3 and 4 character names have higher pricing to reflect the small number of these names available.
To read more about the pricing structure of .eth names read more about pricing
You can register a name for as long as you would like. There is no maximum registration duration.
If you forget to renew your name, it will be released back to the public pool of available names. Luckily the expiration process has a 90 day grace period. This means that once the name expires the original owner has 90 days to renew the name before it is released. After the grace period, the name is released for registration by anyone with a temporary premium which decreases over a 21 days period. The released name continues to resolve your ETH address until the new owner overwrites it.
The .eth registrar is built to ensure once issued, a name cannot be revoked or taken away from its owner. Potential loss can occur if the owner losses access to their private key, or if the owner forgets to renew their name.
The ENS rootnode is currently owned by the ENS DAO. It used to be owned by the ENS Multi-sig, a group of keyholders from different parts of the ecosystem, however as of EP4.10 the ownership has been transferred to the ENS DAO.
Ownership of the rootnode grants the ability to do the following:
- Control allocation and replacement of TLDs other than .eth - this is required to implement DNSSEC integration.
- Enable and disable controllers for the .eth registrar, which affect registration and renewal policies for .eth names.
- Update the pricing for .eth names.
- Receive and manage registration revenue.
Yes and No, We consider ENS to be part of the 'global namespace' in co-existence with DNS, and it is our priority to not pollute the namespace. ENS-specific TLDs are restricted to only '.eth' on Mainnet Ethereum, or .eth and .test on testnets.
By default ENS allows users to import their DNS name through the use of the DNS Registrar. Existing DNS TLDs can reachout to us to take control of their TLD.
ENS complements and extends the usefulness of DNS with decentralised, trustworthy name resolution for web3 resources such as blockchain addresses and distributed content, while Namecoin and Handshake are efforts to replace all or part of DNS with a blockchain-based alternative.
