Ethereum Name Service

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a decentralized name registry service that allows users to map human readable domain names to their Ethereum wallet addresses. These wallet addresses are typically long strings of hexadecimal alphanumeric characters, like "0x85c....," but ENS allows users to convert these to simple English phrases, like "vitalik.eth."

ENS is built on two Ethereum smart contracts: the ENS registry and the ENS resolver. The ENS registry records all the domains registered on the service and stores three pieces of information about each domain: the owner of the domain, the resolver for the domain, and the caching time for all records under the domain. The resolver is responsible for matching (or "resolving") each domain to the corresponding user, website, or address.

ENS is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and an ERC-20 token called $ENS. Token holders can submit proposals and cast their votes on the direction of the DAO, with the weight of each vote determined by the amount of $ENS owned. While $ENS does not have a value accrual mechanism, token holders do control the ENS DAO treasury, which collects all the fees paid to register ENS domains. This is similar to the way the Uniswap DAO operates.

ENS domains are owned on a multi-year basis, with a minimum of one year and a maximum of eight years. The price to register an ENS domain is inversely proportional to its length, with shorter domain names (3 or 4 characters) costing more per year to register and renew than longer domain names (5 or more characters). Domain names must be renewed by users within 90 days of their expiry date.

ENS has seen impressive traction, with a steadily increasing number of total registrations, renewals outpacing expirations, and a steadily increasing number of monthly active addresses. The service has also seen steady growth in revenue.

Overall, ENS is a valuable public utility that improves the user experience for DeFi and blockchain users. As Ethereum and DeFi continue to grow, it is likely that ENS will continue to be successful.

Unveiling the Resurgence of Ethereum and Future Potential

Lens Protocol

It's easy to write tendentious articles excoriating today's social media empires. Anyone with half a brain can list the inherent shortcomings of the ad-driven business model. What's not easy is designing and building an alternative system with better incentives. That's where Stani Kulechov, the founder of Aave, one of the largest DeFi protocols with $4 billion in total value locked, comes in. Kulechov is attempting to do just this with Lens Protocol, a decentralized protocol built on top of the Polygon blockchain that aims to be the "infrastructure" layer for social media, rather than a specific application itself.

One of the main problems with traditional social media companies is their ad-driven business model. These companies build up network effects by offering free services in their infancy, but once they reach critical mass, they start selling users' data to companies for targeted advertising. This model forces walled gardens around content and data, effectively bulwarking against users and creators leaving. This model also prevents composability – for example, you cannot port over your Instagram followers to Twitter or vice versa.

Lens Protocol offers a solution to this problem by allowing users to create a "social graph" data structure that contains all of their interactions and relationships on different dApps. This data structure lives on the blockchain in the form of an NFT (non-fungible token). By storing user data on the blockchain using NFTs, Lens Protocol turns user data from a precious resource into a public utility.

Users create a profile on the Lens Hub for which they receive an NFT. The owner of the NFT has sole control over the profile and has the ability to publish (post, comment, and share), follow others, and set a profile image. The Profile NFT contains the history of all the posts, shares, comments, and other content the user generates. Users can also follow other profiles using the "Follow" feature, which grants them "Follow" NFTs that signify the profiles they are following.

Lens Protocol has provided functionality for developers to build dApps on top of the protocol using the data from user NFTs, mainly Profile NFTs (only if they are given permissioned access by the owners of the NFTs).

Lens Protocol is currently overseen by a multisig wallet, which will be expanded to a broader DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) that can develop and vote on expanded functionality in the future. User growth has been steady, but not exponential, so far.

There are valid concerns about the adoption of decentralized social media protocols, such as their complexity for users, lack of concern among most users about owning their own data, and network congestion and lack of throughput on blockchains. However, it's still early days and Lens Protocol and Stani Kulechov have an ambitious mission. This is the kind of innovation that cryptoeconomics and decentralized governance can bring.

Sources:

https://genesisblockpod.substack.com/p/decentralisedsocialmedia

https://bitpushnews.medium.com/lens-protocol-the-next-generation-of-social-media-838dea2d2450

https://members.delphidigital.io/media/lens-pro

https://cryptopotato.com/what-is-ens-ethereum-name-service/

https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/why-does-ens-need-rent-heres-our-thinking-431462537848

https://messari.io/report/state-of-ens-q3-2022?referrer=all-research