The Next Era of ENS

Transcript

It's exciting to uh have a conversation that we usually have but just with a lot of people watching and it being recorded so this should be fun. >> No pressure. >> No pressure. Um there's a lot of things I want to cover and we generally want to talk about just the next era of ENS and my kind of first question to you just going directly into what we know is upcoming um v2 has been around since 2017 that's a long time we've seen so many great things come out of it people adopting enscoming a very common thing especially on Twitter and uh the thing I'm curious about is what made the focus to be on V2 and what's new about V2?

Yeah. So, I think one of the most amazing things about ENS is that it's still around today. And when you think about what was around when ENS was first launched in 2017, this was before the era of NFTTS. This was before so many things that have since been adopted, been invented, been used. And so, a protocol that was uh whose smart contracts were written in 2017, >> whole different worlds of just thinking about smart contracts. Yeah. Exactly. And so when we thought about, okay, let's like actually look at how the world has changed, the world of crypto has changed and all of the new standards that have been invented since then. L2s are a thing now. You know, like the multi-chain world is a thing

now. >> DeFi was not a thing. >> No, there was >> no account abstraction. Stable coins were not really a thing in 2017. >> I think it was still center. Uh >> yeah, you're right. Center with with Coinbase and Circle. Yes, >> exactly. So, and kind of like meeting your users where you are, adapting to a very fastchanging industry and it just felt like now is the time to actually go and no small task literally rearchitect the entire protocol and all of our apps. >> So, what are kind of the big features that really sort of outshine what's possible in V1?

>> Uh, few things and two separate things actually because not only do we build the protocol, we also maintain the apps. Okay. So on the protocol side, I think the biggest thing for the like the affformentioned um what does it mean to actually have a world where you have stable coins, where you have L2s, how does that affect how your name gets resolved? How does it uh you know when you want to give someone namespace, what does it mean to actually give someone maximal flexibility to how they want to design their own namespace and make rules for their name spaces. Um, so on the protocol side, it's really like allowing for maximal flexibility and design space for the user. On the app side, so currently we maintain the front-end app, which is the app that you go to to register, renew, manage your

names. We're now actually splitting it into two because we also have come to realize that the industry has now grown to you have folks who are maybe casual crypto users and you have people who are really the data nerds and they want to see the data and they when they pull up their name they want to see the entire history and all of its onchain footprint associated with it. Some casual users don't want that. Maybe you want to use it as a profile. So actually splitting into it what we're calling explorer um and then what we're calling just like our normal app. So V2 is a rearchitect of our protocol and also our entire front-end app experience.

>> That's amazing. Um kind of similar to that, there was also a big announcement uh a couple months ago around namechain no longer being pursued. Um we'll kind of just I want to know what happened, but also maybe before that let's kind of give some background on what namechain was and kind of what were the goals and then sort of how you got to that uh decision for for not doing it and prioritizing V2. >> Yeah. And that was not an easy decision to make. Um, so the decision to upgrade our protocol was already in the works and the question was really like what tech stack do we want to deploy it on and I think one of the core tenants for ENS and all of its design and this is like many many hours of debates is really like how do you how do you

maximize and I know this word is used a lot so maybe I won't use it I'm not going to say the decentralization word but I'm going to say like trustlessness okay how do you really actually build an experience and and build owned assets for people that for users that can be based on minimal trust assumptions and we looked around the universe of L2s and we just wanted something that was like max centralizing everything. Plus, one of the things that was a big issue and maybe you remember this, maybe people here who got their names in 2020 21 remember this, but when you got a ENS name in 2021, you probably paid how much in gas fees?

>> A lot. >> A lot. Too much. I I paid uh I remember at least $300 to lock in my domain name and then on top of that I had to wait a whole year but it was the time where the gas fees was the highest. So it felt like a very expensive domain purchase. >> It sounds like a fever dream and so >> versus $10.com. >> Yeah. So one part was like thinking about what text to deploy them. The biggest part of why even we were looking into L2s in the first place was because of this experience and we didn't want our users to have to you know ride along with the volatility of the gas that is mainet. But this is the crazy thing because we decided this two years ago and again this goes to show how quickly the space moves and evolves and even

though sure there are clunkiness and problems, the space finds a way to solve it because at the time gas fees were still expensive. And so we were like, you know what, if we ever wanted to have our users not pay $300 in gas fees, we kind of need to do our own L2. The thing is just in this past year on Ethereum mainet gas has come down if you registered at ENS name from $5 to five cents >> 100x >> and so if you're looking from a UX perspective also you realize the primary motivation of us wanting to even do our own L2 like really was not the valid assumption anymore and again shifting sands because of how quickly the space moves and so when you really when it really comes down to it your name is only your name can only be so powerful

as how how you can guarantee the security of it, right? Because if you get a name and somehow you know like what is more secure than the L1 Ethereum blockchain >> and also if something is tied to your identity, you probably want slightly stronger guarantees than than everything else. >> Yes. What is the only blockchain with no downtime? >> Ethereum. >> So, thanks for answering that. >> We're a little bit biased here as uh as you can see up on the logo. Um, I do want to talk about some of the ENS updates, but I guess one thing I'm curious about is, um, you joined ENS a couple years ago as there's ENS labs, there's ENS DAO,

there's a lot of things that the project has to do to not only maintain the protocol, but to also spread the word around. So, as CEO of ENS Labs, uh, what do you actually do? What are kind of some responsibilities for this whole project's growth? And then also, how do you usually interface with the DAO? >> Uh, okay. There's a two-part question, so I'll answer. >> There's a lot of pieces in there, so you may you may go in any direction. >> Okay. Um, I think the really fun thing about being the CEO at a at an engineering driven org like ENS Labs is that I can get as into the finance and operations and all of the, you know, things that keep the train running, but also as deep into the technical side. Um and I in fact I would

argue that understanding the technical side directly contributes to my success in my role. And the beautiful thing about working at a place like ENS Labs is how open the engineering culture is. I feel like I mean you know I was a VC in a previous life and one of the things that was really hard about VC for me is that you have to see a thousand things but you can only go so deep and in the last two years I feel like I've just done like a deep dive into anything that like I could ever have dreamed of. Like I mean there are words that I use today that like I wouldn't have known even existed like two years ago. There's a there's a going a little bit off track here, but um I realized something similar which was um I use the word delete instead of erase in normal life

and that should not be the case and it's it's like oh you just realize some of these things are just so common to your domain but are not actual words. So I can imagine um any other um differences on kind of being on the VC versus the operating side? >> I mean so many and we could maybe do a talk like just about this some other time. >> Fair enough. Um but um on just like the the how we work with the Dow. So there's a few things that I think actually is very powerful and I know like people don't maybe Dows aren't the hottest topic right now, but um one thing that like it forces us to do is constantly question whether or not what we're doing is actually like putting our users first. and anything that we do and it's very different and I'll give you an

example like um what company Cartik in the normal space in web two space whatever space like asks its users before raising prices. >> None that I can think of. Well, we do and it's because we like want to because like in order to do something like that like we actually need to put this up like and have it discussed like in our DAO and that's crazy and there's not a single company out there that I know that that does that and we did actually have a very spirited debate because we decided to raise prices for the first time ever since launch and uh ended up striking a compromise. So that's something new. The other thing though like the more

powerful thing because this is just like such a small part is that as the core team developing the protocol we cannot unilaterally like do something like a protocol upgrade without it being actually like voted on and agreed upon by token holders. Um, and so yeah, I mean, could there be a universe in which we did all of this work and some and people were like, actually, we don't want V2 and that could happen. And that's kind of a crazy bet to make >> and you're okay with that world. >> I think like um there is, you know, the Google slogan that's like won't be evil, can't be evil.

>> Yeah. >> Like what does it mean to actually like can't be evil? >> No, that's absolutely fair. Um, one of the things that I feel like is not super commonly known is that ENS is integrated in PayPal and Venmo and it is you can actually send some money to a username that by just putting their ENS name. Um, and that's massive consumer app especially in the US a big footprint and with PayPal you have much even much bigger global audience. Uh the thing I'm curious about is to the extent possible like what has what can you share about the experience about integrating those things with those companies or their users the feedback you've received um and kind of how has that changed kind of how you think about u general adoption of getting ENS to everybody.

>> Okay. So um first of all yes and I want to reiterate you can use ENS in Bemo and PayPal. Okay. That is something that's worth saying again. Um but some learning lessons and something that feeds into a trend that I'm seeing. So maybe I'm answering a bonus question that you didn't ask, but um what Okay, so VMO and PayPal integrated ENS because they wanted to enable their users to send stable coins to each other. And stable coins are the very hot topic now in 2026, but PayPal was early on that. They created PUSD a couple years ago, actually. And so they were early on the stable coin thesis and they understood that in order to offer their customers

an experience where they send stable coins each other, stable coins to each other, they cannot have an interface where you're typing 0x 4 eb blah blah blah blah blah you know to each other. That is not a good user experience period. And so they were early. So fintech institutions like that were early to see, hey, if I wanted to be a stable co issuer, I want my users to adopt it to send it to each other. It makes sense to integrate something like ENS, which literally just lets you send to Cartik.eth instead of, you know, not to mention the security risk that it poses when you just like copy paste an address um because of like, you know, address poisoning and things like that.

So from a security standpoint, it makes sense. From a user standpoint, it makes sense. And one of the things that I'm hopeful and excited for is that like now in 2026 when stable coins are the hot topic and there are institutions that are looking at and being like actually it does make sense to come on chain and you're seeing all these big fintech companies start talk about it. They're going to you cannot release like a product where your users come on chain and have a 2017 UX. >> You have to bring them up to speed. >> Bring them up to speed and use integrate ENS.

>> How convenient. Uh well, speaking of stable coins, um you can only buy ENS with ETH and that's a it's a sometimes a big hurdle. You have to kind of have two steps worth of uh ways to kind of get access to the asset to be able to buy it. Um but there's a lot of stuff that's changing. So I guess I'm curious on what are some optimizations on how you pay for your domain name and what can we expect in the future. >> Yeah. So I mean again when ENS launched, stable coins were not a thing. So it didn't design to take like ERC20 token payments, you know, and that's something that like seems very obvious today, but it is a it is like brand new things in like the protocol logic you have to like deploy, right? So not only are we going

to launch V2 with the ability for users to buy stable coins again like a nod to like how quickly stable coins have grown um but also we are working so that you can buy your ENS name with any ERC20 token. And so this is not even >> Oh, this is like and you do the conversion or >> Yeah, >> that's incredible. >> I mean, this all goes to like, you know, while we're redesigning the protocol, what massive UX improvements can we also make? And like when you're looking at the state of, you know, the world that you're in and building in right now, it's like you take ES payment, you take stable coin. If you can take stable coin as ERC20, why not all ERC20? And in fact, let's go one step further. Can you start this transaction on any L2 and

still have it settle? >> It's massive. This is actually even something I didn't know. So, I'm equally amazed and I can't wait for a world where I'm using my token as house to buy a domain name from some of those ERC20 tokens. And uh that's actually that's incredible. Um, I feel like one of the things that you have as ENS the the highest kind of chance of integrating with the rest of the internet is being able to actually be fully compatible with TLDS and just I can and um the thing I'm curious about is what has been the reaction from the IAN community on how they think about decentralized domain names and just what are some of the learnings been as you

have kind of made a lot of things compatible with the rest of the DNS world. Yeah, I mean I can is an institution that existed long before crypto and they are literally why we can rely on internet infrastructure working. So they are a very old institution and they do a very important job. something that we saw in this like you know alternative naming space um is a lot of new entrance that came in and I think like wrote the crypto wave and was like oh yeah like I'm going to sell you doc crypto I'm going to sell youn here's the thing cryptos and the NFTs of the world are not actually in the internet root zone and the issue if you're not in the

internet root zone is that you're not actually officially recognized as internet rails which means there's no one to say that like you are for sure the only owner of cartik.crypto crypto because no one because again >> you have a conflict and somebody else can bid for the domain again >> which is not great >> not a good idea >> what ENS has always tried to play with is that like ETH is currently reserved in the internet like uh infrastructure so that does exist we have engaged in fact I have teammates right now at AA um at IAN 86 in Seville Spain at the IAN policy forum like we have spent spent years of like building relationships and

showing to I can that like we are not willing to like do things that are outside of like the rules of the road and engaging in good faith with them. And so hopefully that kind of like relationship building and playing by the rules short term probably like you know sometimes we have to just look at things that are very outside I think the rules of the road and be like well we're not doing that but longterm I believe it will pay off >> and um that that's something I'm personally hopeful for because I think in a way doing this for almost a decade has kind of proven that this is something that has continued uh to grow and is interesting to actually make it compatible with the rest of the internet. So, um, that's, uh, well, ETH on on my browser is, uh, something I

would look forward to. U,, my last question to you is there's a lot of moving pieces for a massive project like ENS that has millions of domain names, millions of users. Um, and you kind of operate a lot of the the engineering side and the teams for this. But from your perspective, what's been the hardest part of running um, and building kind of these trustless protocols? And um do you have any anywhere from advice for people who are also trying this to uh just learnings that you can share? Yeah, I think one of the really hard things about building a protocol but also having an app is that you know protocol does the work that like you don't see right like because if it doesn't break it means it's working but if it does break it threatens the entire integrity of everything you've built on

and so ENS sometimes is judged on the progress on its apps but it's important work really is on the protocol and of course they're both important and obviously we have to complement each other well and work well but I think The really tough thing about building a protocol with millions of existing users is that sure as a startup you can move fast and break things. You cannot move fast break the internet. >> No, you cannot move fast and break things with a protocol with millions of users with owned assets on it. And I think the hardest part sometimes is feeling like you know we are a startup size and we are a small company and sometimes we want to in the age of vibe coding to release things here and there

and here and there but as a protocol team you can't you have to design for all the weird edge cases that deeply impact your users and I think that was like a really hard like thing also for me to like really understand. Um, but that's probably the hardest part is like so many decisions are downstream sometimes from protocol and like even integrating the front-end apps and the protocol is like just you're moving mountains and I have to give a lot of like shout out respect to the team for like being able to essentially like what we're doing right now is like our version of the merge, you know, like we're upgrading a protocol and making sure the apps biggest upgrade >> big. Yeah. And and it's like it's no small task. So I am in awe every day of

like our team for like being able to pull this off or hopefully pull this off soon. >> I have confidence that this will be a very successful launch and uh thank you so much for that amazing conversation. >> Thank you. Please give a big round of applause.