Naming as a Coordination Layer for Web3 Identity

Transcript

[music] >> Uh, hello. Uh, my name is Makoto and uh Iwata. Okay, so here it says protocol developer and uh today I'm actually slight title is slightly different because my ChatGPT said this is better. So, it's now today's role is as a evolving role of naming in Ethereum. And uh yeah, uh I am OG uh everybody call it, but I just realized in Lisbon there's a full of OGs. Uh, so Oh, and then but usually if you have seen me in the past, I used to have a long hair and I used to have this uh little avatar I doodled uh pre

you know, generative AI age, so it's hand-drawn avatar. And uh yeah, so today's topic yeah, because I'm kind of self-proclaimed OGs, so I'm going to talk about origin stories of pre-ENS uh pre-ENS and the now and future. Just a question. Uh, how many of you guys were in crypto when uh there's a I think it's global Lisbon was last time in two 23? Raise hands.

Okay, about half of it. Keep raising hands. How many of you were still buying crypto when they had a first community event called Lis going 2021? Okay, still staying strong. Okay, how about 2016? Yes, just one, two. Okay, three. Oh, wow. There's a lot more, yeah. Okay, cool. Uh, so in the pre-ENS era, uh so 2016, the reason I picked this is that's when I got into the crypto and it was about 10 years ago. And then that event uh big events of that time was in March, there's a Homestead version with Ethereum got released, which was kind of

one of the first kind of ready for the consumer version. Which wasn't really ready, but that's a big release. And we have that infamous DAO hack when I think we created DAO and it's got hacked and all this stuff. And that was the first time I actually got the crypto and uh put into their thing and I lost it for 3 months and I just didn't know how to check this smart contract so that I got the money back all this stuff. It was very stressful moment. And also in September, there's a Devcon in Shanghai. Anyone been to Devcon 2?

No, just one. Yeah, and so even though ENS itself was was launched in 2017 year later, the seed was already planted. I asked the founder Nick Johnson like when you started working writing the first code and he said, "Oh yeah, something like June, July." So this is about a you know, uh about 10 years be ago, he came up with the ideas of writing a code and all that on the September, he presented the first idea of like a name service back then. So that's then. And that time the biggest problem was scaling, but I think scaling now and scaling back then is slightly different.

That scaling at that time is again, how to fully sync all the full blockchain in your laptop. And then in the first time again, I organize a Ethereum coding workshop and the first thing was just like you know, people download software and they for 30 minutes to hours just like chatting until the block is fully in sync. That was Yeah, but they saw that's commercial ready. That's, you know, but that was a scaling issue. And one solution came up with basically the MetaMask. They just celebrated their 10 years. So when they came uh it had a mixed reaction that once they they also launched a so-called Etherea, which is centralized RPC provider. So

from the purest point of view, like oh, if you don't have a full block in your laptop, you're not using blockchain. But at the same time, you know, this was amazing that sometimes if you now you have a as long as you have a browser, you can interact with Ethereum. That was like a game changer. Like I was very excited at that time. Uh and the year later ENS came in. So that was a logo back then. And so probably we are so big at that time. It's very simple. You have a name, you have and you want to know what Ethereum address uh that name is tied into. Which is even called even now called like, you know, full resolution. And if you any way you are

attending a hackathon, this is a fast layer of integration, the easiest one. We still this is most important thing. And the how you use it is basically you open up MetaMask and if you took my token of ETH and you see my same address and you can send me ETH. So that was a and I remember we had a so-called ENS workshop in 2017. And we have people from MetaMask, Etherea and MyEtherWallet and a couple more companies. And if you do integrate with these, that's it. That you kind of integrated your whole whole the Ethereum blockchain world. So that was the easy days.

Five years later, PTNS time. So uh yeah, I think now half the people do actually remember what it was like that this can this was the last time I visit uh I say I say Lisbon and dynamic was quite different. Like, you know, everybody was like buzzing and everybody was talking about, you know, oh, let's get a golden visa to like move to Lisbon. I think the people who ride a wave probably here since then and that then on the uh November, uh ENS launched now and token. The actual peak of ENS it came itself came a later year later. We

had a uh the highest number of registration, but that year was kind of infection point of the ENS as well. So, I call it peak ENS. And at that time, yeah, one of the peak story is the Does everyone know Dune Analytics? It's a kind of on-chain analytics where anyone can write a SQL to visualize and that as a OG, you basically try out every first product and because I was new, so I think on the previous Christmas, they actually gifted me this nice denim uh cap and 6 months later when I joined this you uh Lisbon and then when I went to the side events, I had that someone offered a four ETH uh to buy this denim cap and

at that time one ETH was 4,000, hence it was like 16,000, which my wife favorite, so she was wearing this to the beach and it was like "Don't do that. Like we you're going to like, you know, get your head chopped off and then it gets stolen, but like I don't think anyone uh offer four ETH anymore, but that was kind of peak story, which half of the uh member here still remember that excitement. And at that time, uh we started solving a different problem, which we didn't even know existed. So, when we launched the ENS back in 2016, uh we did this forward resolution and that which is mimic which mimics the model basically DNS internet domain.

And that So, that was uh name to address, but if you can name to link name to address, you can do the reverse as well. So, Nick Johnson just uh put that in not really thinking much. But then that So, this is reverse resolution that we have actually the name space called addr is a smart address addr reverse name space which has linked to your name. That that's it. And that kind of became the kind usage that when people connect to the lots of website and you know, like Portugal like Pedro is wallet connected he made a you know, critical part of like connecting wallet to the

site. That becomes kind of defect way of interacting with a smart contract and serum system. And when you connect it all the site actually knows the address then you can just use a reverse lookup. Here you go. You got a name. So, suddenly like you know, your ENS name become becomes your login name. And we added a ways to basically tie with the avatar. So, and you had a JPEG and this is not the crypto punk. This is so-called Buster Crypto Punk which someone gifted to me. I didn't have an insight to get the Crypto Punk. So, I didn't own anything but anyway. So, then it became a kind of Suddenly, we reinvented ourselves a web 3 identity without changing anything on

the protocol because people kind of discovered the usage. And I don't know how many people have used the Poap. You know, Patricio the creator of Poap is here. And every time we go to the event I We also created something for ENS card where you can uh touch here and then you can get this nice Poap and then these are all the animation I was created. So, that was great time. And but this kind of great success came up with a new problem of the scaling as we know right now what we When people say scaling, this is it. The gas price I think this is sometime in the 21 or 22 that basically registering the $5 of the worth of ENS name cost over 100 dollars worth of gas cost.

And to how did we solve? We did you know, layer two side chain all this stuff to basically basically distribute the workload. So this is the latest transaction count. I think the lower bottom is ETH Ethereum. It's not it's kind of steady but it's slightly going up. Then purple is Polygon, blue is base and yellow is now the Robinhood chain. So overall we have way more transactions. It says 20 5 million transactions uh per months which is way more than the back in 2021.

Um then that came with a new problem that you know, when I showed the one line of the name the same address. That was a prob that was a solution for the 2016 but now it you have to think about which you like which coin or which chain this these are the famous kind of bridge protocol I think across and the jumper. Uh they they do same thing. Only thing they do is that they flip uh coin and network. One pick coin first and another one pick network first but it's still so many to pick. So yeah, this is kind of the new problem UX problem we're trying to solve and we we as a I'm in the protocol team of ENS and

we try to solve with a different way. One is multi-coin is a way to be able to specify multi different kind of address in the ENS name. CCIP read is the way to let you issue sub names in different chains so that you you spend less gas on creating names. And but I must say these two it's been used. For example, I say base.eth is one of the successful example and it helps I think more than million name I think 7 million way more than the dot eth name. So, it is successful. But, the default standard we ended up choosing is kind of application side of style. What does it mean? Like this is the

This is a wallet connect integration with ENS I did back in 2020 that like it has a you know all metamask wallet connect so yada yada yada. Then 2026 there's three sides uh pumped up fun, Polymarket and the network school. Uh uh I think there was a new stuff they got shut down in Malaysia, but now they're going to Kazakhstan. I went there in May. It was very interesting experience. And uh they kind of still use similar models. The priority chance that they no longer promote this kind of universal wallet to connect to everywhere, but they just promote to login using G Gmail Gmail. And the network school is their app is amazing.

They actually come up with wallet, but they don't even suggest connecting wallet. They just use Previ as a standard and they just connect and then they have wallet functionality. So, this is kind of mindset change and I think what we kind of lost on its way is uh comp you still have it block as a blockchain we have composability, we have ownership identity, but it's been all hidden in the name of the simpler UX. I think that's what we kind of lost and that I mean there's some people used to say GM, but now I start feeling a bit of cringe so I stopped saying, but like you know these are the stuff we've been losing. Uh

And uh I don't know whether it comes back. It may comes back, it may not. And so, now the last chapter is the now and future. So, what we have right now in 2026 is a bear market. And we have war. Uh Instead moving to this one, I chose to move to Dubai last year. So, I got a direct hit. Uh, and I don't think blockchain can solve this. Well anything but nowadays, I think everybody's into AI AI agent. And as I said, the avatar is the one I do do myself back in 2021. And this is these are two of my agent. Uh, let me introduce Makito and the Mashito. Mashin is created by

uh, Gemini and banana. And this is based on my I think open claw agent. And this is my uh, homies agent agent. And I think you probably everybody has one or two agent. And then the role of it I think identity in the agent is a bit strange world that you could have identity per model or I could you could do it per AI framework or if you're using something like a cloud core, every directory where you clone your repo that becomes a identity. I started doing Well, I started doing I still have a bunch of terminals and I have a multiple session in one single repository and I have some messaging

framework to talk to each other. Then it's even not directory, it's just like a role of like I have When I I do something I start creating like a coder, researcher, reviewer. And that that role becomes identity as well. And so, yeah, crypt before AI is kind of simple experience, but now it's just going like all over the place. There's a so many different agents between human and service. And but to be honest, do we still use AI in the crypt world? Uh, not really. My my precious Makito and Mashid are still I'm a bit worried about them hacked immediately. So, I think I don't know how many people start using Maybe if

you're using something like Polymarket, you might already have like Gazillion agents doing all sorts of stuff, but I still be worried that how do they trust each other and then how do they know which chain to use and how do they know how to pay all the stuff? And the for that solution, I still am not just ENS, we have multiple solutions. I think the first one is X 42 is I think presented by the coin X coin base guys, I think. They use basically DNS, which we modeled after, you know, internet domain name as kind of name identifier that like and they start using the old protocol of the 42, which was never in use to represent the payment to return the payment detail.

And they it's good it's more catered to the kind of non-crypt user, but it's it's kind of restricted by URL. So, it's one way to do. It has a 70 5 million transaction in the last 30 days. And we also have ERC 8004, which is Ethereum's answer for basically managing agents, which is basically it lets you specify the data on chain registry. Anyone can create these on chain registry and that's where you can store metadata such as where where's the MCP endpoint or people can put the reputation again. And about if you have

a more registration, how agent will discover. So, the small bits ENS ID is very small extension that to we already have a ways to set a text record into ENS name. So, you you just use that to associate the basically agent Sorry, the XA004 registry information. And we also have a 26, which kind of replaces it. Lightweight alternative to XA 004. So, we have something. And also, the more basic thing is this, now there's contra uh has its own naming. Uh well, you can name the contra itself. So, you can let uh agent to discover. I think what's

important thing is like So, previous era, the problem is that uh it was too complex. So, let's simplify it by hiding all the good bits of web 3. But now, agent can handle agent is smarter than you. So, you have all these They can handle all the complexity, but you need to name your contra or response or roles in this registry or naming so that uh to to let agent to discover. I think that's kind of where we are and the where will be. Uh still, I think the I think this is a This is a

uh I think the last hurdle to fill with Like we I think we are at kind of inflection point where the crypto will be relevant in agent area or not. Currently, not yet, but I think something like you know, this hackathon is here to solve this problem. So, if you you know, you can come up with a service to by utilizing existing standard to fill this gap. I think we might have a still chance to be relevant in area of the AI agent. Uh I think that Yeah.

Just to recap. So, 2016, uh yeah, role of naming it was very easy that just uh yeah, resolving address. And uh that was 10 years ago, 5 years ago, it's about kind of representing ownership. But now, I think the role of our address or name itself becomes just a coordinate point to let agent to the human to discover the new ways to use the agent and the internet. is my talk and thank you very much.

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