Happy Friday, everyone. I recently spoke with Nick Johnson, a former Google engineer who is now the lead developer of Ethereum Name Service, an offering that is akin to GoDaddy but for Web3. Known in the crypto world as ENS, it lets users replace the long jumble of characters that represent a crypto wallet address with a handle that is easy to read and remember. In my case, for example, I can use my ENS name—@jeffroberts.eth—in place of 0x82630Ea599D20147694E3113BD501D1c638A252F.
ENS got its start in 2017 but really took off in early 2022 when people were registering more than 30,000 domains a month. Demand has since tapered—as is the case for everything amid crypto winter—but today ENS says it has registered over 2.5 million names on behalf of more than a half million buyers.
