ENS (service)

How it works

ENS (Ethereum Name Service) is an infrastructure name protocol. It replaces long addresses (“0x…”) with human-readable names like alice.eth and works as the “phone book” of the crypto world: wallets and apps show a name instead of a string of characters. Below is how it works and what to look at.

ENS has two sides that are easy to confuse. The name .eth itself is an asset (an NFT), covered on a separate page, ENS (.eth name). This page is about the protocol and the service. One brand, two different entities.

• Holds nothing. ENS only maps names to addresses; it moves no money and holds no funds.¹
• What it is made of. The registry and resolvers are the protocol contracts: the registry records who owns a name and which resolver answers for it, while the resolver turns the name into an address and other records. The .eth registrar is how a name is registered for a term and renewed. The manager app (the ENS website interface) is just a convenient frontend, while the protocol runs independently, and you can work with a name through different wallets and interfaces.
• Self-custody. ENS does not store your money; the name belongs to you directly, without intermediaries.
• Community-run. Rules and prices are set by the ENS DAO — the community of ENS governance-token holders (on governance tokens, see what is a token).
• Open source, no account or KYC. Only registration of the name itself in the network is required.
• Network. Ethereum and a growing number of others.

Why it matters to a beginner

• A readable name lowers the risk of a mistake when sending. Checking alice.eth is easier than a long string of characters (but still verify — see how to send crypto).
• The name works across many wallets and apps at once.