Anyone who owns a website is now able to receive crypto payments directly to their domain name, as Ethereum Name Service announces full integration with the centralized web.
Fast facts
- Making the announcement on Twitter Friday morning, the new upgrade will bring interoperability between the centralized web and the blockchain-based ENS system.
- The internet currently uses the Domain Name System, such as this site’s Forkast.News or Google.com, so people are more easily able to navigate the internet by linking these sites to IP addresses. ENS, however, is a decentralized version of this system, where domain names end in .eth, and are stored on the Ethereum blockchain as opposed to centralized servers.
- Decentralization of the naming system means there is less chance of censorship or interference on the website. It also means the domain name can act as a wallet address for receiving cryptocurrency without having to go through the arduous process of ensuring a recipient’s full 64-character wallet address is correct.
- With this upgrade, however, owners of regular domains on the DNS are now able to receive any cryptocurrency through ENS as if they had a .eth domain name. In a company blog post, ENS director of operations Brantly Millegan said: “For example, if you own ‘example.com’ on DNS, you can import it into ENS — as example.com, not example.eth, the latter is a separate name. You can then set ENS records for it, e.g. to allow you to receive payments in cryptocurrencies like ETH, BTC, and DOGE to example.com.”
- Furthermore, all names on ENS are non-fungible tokens. While importing a DNS name onto ENS allows it to receive crypto payments, it remains centrally hosted, meaning it is not minted as an NFT and it is still able to be removed from those central servers.