ENS Integration Lets Users Receive ETH to .com Addresses

Sumejja Muratagić-Tadić
Last updated: | 2 min read

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has announced that users with a .com address will now be able to receive ethereum (ETH) payments to that address instead of having to register for a separate .eth address as before.

Source: AdobeStock / Jo Panuwat D

This will help them keep everything in one place, while gaining all the functionalities that a .eth address has to offer, they said.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is often referred to as the “phonebook of the internet.” This is what bridges the difference between how web browsers access devices connected to the Internet (through an alphanumeric string called an IP address) and how humans do it (through a more memorable hostname).

The Ethereum Name Service functions almost identically, except that it also tries to increase censorship resistance through decentralization—and it can also act as an Ethereum address. In other words, instead of using a long alphanumeric string type of address to send funds to, you can simply send to the .eth address that is part of the ENS.

The newest turn of events, which is the full DNS namespace integration into ENS that recently went live on the Ethereum mainnet, means that this functionality has gone beyond .eth addresses.

Now, users of a second level DNS domain name can import that same name into ENS and gain the same functionalities that ENS usually offers. A second level domain name is one that only has one dot in it (“example.com”). In other words, if you already own example.com and you want to receive ether payments on it, there is no need to register for example.eth anymore—you can just import example.com into ENS.

However, there will still be some important differences between .com and .eth names, as ENS Director of Operations Brantly Millegan explained in a different blog post.

For example, .eth names have a cost scaled to time registered required by the ENS protocol; the shorter your chosen name, the more you have to pay on an annual basis. DNS names imported to ENS have no ENS protocol fee at all, as they already pay a separate fee on the DNS side.

There are also some differences in security: ENS has no admin powers to take away someone’s .eth name, while whoever owns the name on DNS can always claim the corresponding name on ENS. In other words, the ultimate security of a DNS name on ENS depends on the security of the name on DNS.

The team has also published a step-by-step guide on how to import your DNS name into ENS, which means users who want to get started can do so as soon as they like.

At the time of writing (08:10am UTC), ETH was trading at USD 3,127, up by 0.5% in the past 24 hours and down -0.5% on a 7-day basis.
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Learn more:

Ethereum Name Service – What’s Human Readable Domain Name Good For?
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