• The Ethereum Name Service is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system on Ethereum. The Ethereum Name Service’s job is to map human-readable names like ‘alice.eth’ to machine-readable identifiers such as Ethereum addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata. ENS is the governance token of the protocol and is used to participate in the protocol governance and vote on treasury expenditure.

  • ENS is the native token of the platform, used for the following functions:

    • Governance: ENS DAO governs key components of the ENS protocol like pricing, the price oracle, and more. Proposals can only be submitted with at least 100K ENS tokens. A simple majority with a quorum of at least 1% of all tokens is required for approval.

    • Treasury Grants: ENS token holders will vote to approve treasury grants and expenditure. Future revenue will flow into the treasury.

  • The protocol consists of the following major components working in conjunction:

    • Naming Service: Users can register a .ETH name to replace the normal Ethereum addresses that start with 0x into a human-readable name. It also supports addresses of over 100 blockchains, a content hash of a decentralized website, profile information such as an avatar and Twitter handle, and more.

    • DNS Namespace Integration: Users can map a DNS domain such as example.com to ENS. Then users will be able to receive payments in cryptocurrencies like ETH, BTC, and DOGE to example.com.

    • ENS DAO: ENS constitution is decided on the first week of token launch to determine the rules and guidelines for the community. The Constitution can always be amended by the ENS DAO in the future with a threshold of 67% approval and a quorum of 5% of total tokens.

  • As at November 10th 2021, the maximum and total token supply of ENS is 100,000,000.

  • Learn more about the token distribution of ENS here.