Original author: TechFlow
As long as the timing is right, old trees will bloom new flowers.
Yesterday, ENS (Ethereum Domain Name Service), a project that Vitalik firmly believes in but has been silent for a long time, announced the V2 version of ENS on its official Twitter account: promoting the original domain name service to L2.
With the expected support of ETH ETF, the ENS token has increased by 60% in the past month; taking advantage of this trend to launch new products is a natural choice.
What benefits and impacts will supporting various ENS domain names on L2 bring? We flipped through the new ENS technical white paper to try to find the answer.
Why support L2?
ENS has obviously seen the current decline in ETH mainnet activity and the activeness of L2, which is one of the main reasons why it is going with the trend.
In addition, ENS has supported CCIP-Read in its technological accumulation over the past few years, which allows querying off-chain data during the ENS name resolution process. This means that name resolution is not limited to data within the blockchain, but can also obtain data from other systems, including L2 (Layer 2) and external databases.
Simply put, CCIP-Read is like giving your domain name more possibilities and choices. You can freely decide where to resolve and manage your domain name, and you are no longer limited to the Ethereum mainnet.
Technically, L2 domain names can be handled, and coupled with the trend of user transfer, you will naturally understand the motivation of ENS.
More importantly, the Ethereum mainnet (L1) has become a bottleneck for ENS expansion due to its high transaction fees and limited processing power. Each registration, renewal, and update operation on ENS requires a high gas fee, which not only increases the burden on users, but also limits the popularity and application of ENS.
Through ENS V2, users can delegate domain name resolution to L2 or other external systems, so that they can enjoy the low cost and high speed of L2 while choosing the most suitable solution according to their needs.
ENS V2: A more flexible domain name service with lower costs
To understand how ENS V2 is implemented, you need to have a general understanding of its components.
ENS allows you to map complex Ethereum addresses (such as 0x1234...abcd) to simple and easy-to-remember names (such as alice.eth). This way, when you want to send cryptocurrency to someone or interact with a decentralized application (dApp), you only need to remember a simple name instead of a long list of addresses.
But what is behind all this?
Registry: This is a place where all domain names are recorded. It will tell you who the owner of a domain name is and the address of the resolver responsible for resolving the domain name.
Resolvers: When you enter a domain name, the resolver is responsible for converting it to the corresponding Ethereum address or other resource (such as IPFS content hash).
Registrars: These are the entities responsible for allocating and managing domain names. They ensure that domain names can be registered, renewed, and updated.
In ENS V1, all of these parts run on the Ethereum mainnet, which means that each registration or update of a domain name requires a high transaction fee (Gas fee). This not only increases the cost for users, but also limits the popularity of ENS.
ENS V2 brings a number of improvements to these three key technical components, aiming to address issues in V1 and improve the flexibility and scalability of the system.
New hierarchical registry architecture
In ENS V2, the registry is designed as a hierarchical structure. Each domain has its own registry, which is responsible for managing its subdomains and resolvers. The benefits of this design are:
Support for name expiration: When a domain expires, it disappears from the registry immediately, reducing management complexity.
More efficient subtree management: Entire subtrees can be recursively replaced or deleted, making management of multiple domains more efficient.
Universal Parser
ENS V2 introduces a universal resolver that simplifies the domain name resolution process. Users only need to call a resolve method, and the resolver will handle all the logic internally. This not only simplifies the client implementation, but also provides a convenient migration path, allowing existing users to smoothly transition to the new system.
Support L2
ENS V2 allows users to delegate domain name resolution to the L2 (Layer 2) network or other external systems. This means that users can enjoy the low fees and high speed of L2 while choosing the most suitable solution according to their needs. This change greatly reduces transaction fees and improves the system's processing power and user experience.
The too-long-to-read version is as follows:
How to migrate to V2?
Obviously, the launch of ENS V2 provides users with more efficient and low-cost domain name services. In the future, we may be able to foresee a wave of old dramas of domain name registration on L2.
But to enjoy these new features, existing ENS users need to migrate their domains from V1 to V2.
According to the official technical documentation, first of all, the ENS team will deploy all ENS V2 contracts on L1 and L2. These contracts will be granted temporary permissions in the initial stage, such as disabling registration and renewal functions, to ensure a smooth migration process.
Once the initial deployment is complete, the first sync operation will take place. This will create entries for existing .eth second-level domains (2 LDs) on L2 and transfer ownership of those entries to the migration contract.
Users can then choose to migrate their domains to either ENS V2’s L1 or L2 systems:
Migrate to L2: Users transfer ENS V1 names to the system contract, which then creates or transfers ENS V2 names to users on L2. During this process, L1's domain name resolver continues to reflect the state of the unmigrated names, ensuring that there is no resolution interruption.
Migrate to L1: Users can choose to keep their domain names on L1 for stronger security and availability guarantees. The migration process is similar, and the system will ensure that the resolver and registration information on L1 are updated in sync.
Through the above steps, ENS V2 provides a smooth migration path, allowing users to easily transition to the new system and enjoy lower fees, higher speeds, and more flexible domain name management capabilities.
However, the current migration roadmap is only in the planning stage, and the specific implementation time will be subject to the information provided by the official.
Finally, domain name service itself is not a very hot track, and the current price increase of ENS benefits more from the narrative of ETH BETA; and with product updates and cooperation with more L2s, there is one more reason to extend this round of BETA.
ENS migrates to L2, reducing the cost and increasing the speed of domain name registration, which may trigger a new round of domain name registration craze. As the registration fee decreases, more users and developers may rush to register the domain names they are interested in, thereby expanding the user base of ENS.
At the same time, the launch of ENS V2 may become a catalyst for the price of ENS token ($ENS). Lower transaction fees and higher system efficiency will attract more users and developers to use ENS services, thereby increasing the demand for $ENS. In addition, as ENS expands on L2, more use cases and integrations will also give more value capture effects.
