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5th May 2022 > > Ethereum Name Service - the organisation.

Updated: Apr 21, 2023

tl;dr

Take another step on your personal Web 3.0 journey with ENS.


Market Snap (at time of writing)








Market Wrap

Stocks on a tear encouraging BTC enthusiasts to test the $40k price point. Tomorrow is options expiry day again with significant windfalls for purchasers of puts if BTC retains a 3-handle. Market moves around option expiry dates and trade points can be highly technical but not in the sense that technical analysts use the word.


Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Ethereum Name Service (ENS)

Ever since the very first iteration of Web 1.0 we all started becoming familiar with domain names, a classic example being www.curiouscryptos.com, simply one of the most informative and useful websites in development. Though perhaps I am a little biased.


Anyone is free to register a traditional domain name so long as it hasn’t already been taken, does not contravene intellectual or property rights, and presumably is not offensive, though as time goes by the definition of offensive is at risk of becoming unmanageable.


As we move inexorably towards Web 3.0 – a decentralised utopia where you own your data, and you monetise that data for your benefit and not the benefit of the tech titans – a simpler, more intuitive naming of your Web 3.0 wallet will accelerate crypto adoption.


As an example, I interact with Decentralised Finance (DeFi) applications – Dapps – using my MetaMask wallet controlled by my Ledger Nano. Many people use MetaMask on its own, but I have grave security fears about that simplistic approach. Honestly, it is no more inconvenient using the two in tango with one another, and I highly recommend it.


(If that sentence makes little sense to you, please head on over to Modules 1.11 and 1.12 of our free crypto training course at the aforementioned website).


One of my wallets accessed by MetaMask is known as this:


0x23Ff936E2a76d7117097EaD4C522c24713eb7186.


Subscribers to our training course recognise that this is a public key that allows anyone to send ETH directly to me. Form an orderly queue now.


If you are a regular user of Dapps, or even centralised crypto exchanges like Coinbase or Binance, you will know that the management of public keys is frankly a pain in the butt. It’s not so much that one might input a letter or number incorrectly (who hasn’t heard of copy and paste?) but there is plenty of opportunity to quote a public key for the wrong blockchain. If one was to do so, there is every chance of losing those funds.


I made that mistake one time when transferring BABYDOGE between a wallet and an exchange. Though I did not lose everything, I had to take a 30% haircut to retrieve the funds. I did find that a touch annoying.


ENS is one attempt to democratise Web 3.0 and Dapps by making wallet names human-readable and therefore more intuitive and more comfortable for new users.


If you are interested, I will talk you through the process I experienced registering marktimmis.eth.


Head on over to:



Input the name you would like and press search to tell you if it is available. If so, click on it to reach this screen:

Total cost for one year is 0.014 ETH or approximately $40. Of this $34 is gas fees due to congestion on the ETH network (see CCC yesterday for an update on the move to ETH 2.0).


Adding each additional year before you must renew generally costs an extra 0.002 ETH which is $6. I chose 6 years for a total cost of 0.023 ETH or around $66.


Click the orange “Connect” button on the left hand side of the webpage and then the blue “Request to Register” button. MetaMask should then show a screen where you have to accept the first of two transactions by pressing “Commit”.


Very important point – make sure you do the following actions prior to pressing “Commit”:

- Enable Use Ledger Live under Settings > Advanced.
- Open and unlock Ledger Live App.
- Plug in your Ledger device and select the Ethereum app.
- Enable "smart contract data" or "blind signing" on your Ledger device.

If that appears complicated, then there will be a whole module devoted to the use of Ledger Live in our free training course but that has not yet been released. Any questions in the meantime, please do not hesitate to ask.


You will then be asked to confirm the transaction on your Ledger Nano. Once you have done so you will see a screen like this:

The green bar is simply a delay to ensure that two or more people are not registering the same ENS at the same time.


Once that countdown is finished click “Register” bottom left hand corner, press “Confirm” in MetaMask and accept the transaction on your Ledger Nano.


Now you are the proud owner of your own .eth domain name.


What you actually own is an NFT, which can be transferred to any other wallet.


You can add extra information to your NFT including BTC and other crypto public keys, email, your avatar, and a bunch of other things, all of which will obviously incur gas fees, so you may want to wait for ETH 2.0 following The Merge and the implementation of sharding.


In tomorrow’s CCC we will take a closer look at the coin native to the ENS ecosphere, imaginatively named ENS.

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