Nick Johnson, the founder of Ethereum Name Service (ENS), was pleasantly surprised when he received double the amount of capital he had asked for from Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum. Johnson spoke exclusively to Cointelegraph at the ETHGlobal event in London, where he discussed the progress of ENS. The project allows users to create Web3 addresses that are both human-readable and can function as a Web3 wallet for cryptocurrencies and NFTs, as well as a domain for decentralized websites.
Before getting involved with Ethereum, Johnson worked at Google. However, his interest in Ethereum grew due to its programmability. With a strong background in infrastructure, tooling, and libraries, Johnson was able to develop his own Ethereum strings library. String manipulation, the process of working with text-based data, is considered one of the most complex tasks in software development.
After being hired by the Ethereum Foundation, Johnson was initially assigned to the EthSwarm team, where he focused on decentralized data storage and distribution. However, he soon realized the need for a naming system for Ethereum’s content and proposed the idea of ENS. Even after moving to the Go Ethereum team, he continued working on ENS as a side project.
To support ENS’s development, the Ethereum Foundation encouraged Johnson to work full-time on the project and provided funding through a grant. Johnson created a two-year roadmap and estimated the resources needed for a small team. However, Vitalik Buterin stepped in and doubled the amount of capital Johnson had requested.
Since its launch, over two million ENS addresses have been registered by users. However, Johnson believes that the number of registrations is not the most important metric. He is more interested in understanding how many users are using crypto addresses instead of DNS names in their wallets.
Looking ahead, Johnson plans to expand ENS to networks that can benefit from Web3 utility. He believes that ENS should be accessible to users wherever they are, and if a new distributed content network gains popularity, ENS should support it. Additionally, Johnson aims to make ENS more user-friendly and plans to introduce Ethereum layer-2 infrastructure in the coming years.
In conclusion, Johnson’s journey with ENS highlights the importance of creativity and innovation in developing solutions for the Ethereum ecosystem. With continued growth and development, ENS has the potential to revolutionize the way users interact with decentralized networks.