Driving Global Decentralization via The ENS Protocol
How Culture Catalysts Drive Mass Market Adoption of Web3 Technology
On April 26, The ENS Protocol saw its largest single day spike in revenue. With over $1.2 million generated from registrations. A 183% increase from the day before. In the next pair of days, ENS would go onto surpassing both Aave and BAYC in trading volume. With an equivalent of 446 ETH in secondary sales on OpenSea.
Savvy proponents of ENS understand its potential to disrupt industry worldwide. Registering popular brand names such as balenciaga.eth has been an alpha strategy. Listings for these premium names are in the millions. Yet without mainstream adoption, these registered names are more like liabilities than assets.
That will change soon. Inspired by The ENS DAO’s Twitter Space on 4/21/22 (ENS Domain Investing and Long-Term Thinking) Number Mania is the phenomenon that will catalyze mainstream adoption of ENS. Sales of 3 and 4 digit domain names are driving the explosion of registrations worldwide. We are entering Web3’s Kairotic moment.
Culture as a Catalyst for Mainstream Adoption
Belonging is a deep, psychological need that is universal throughout all human culture. Successful NFT projects rally communities around an avatar, trend or movement.
Numbers are universal. Numbers cross cultures. All humans use numbers to remember significant information about their own identity. Eastern cultures have long had a preference and use for numbers in their work lives as well.
Number Mania, the registration of 3 and 4 digit ENS domains in the multitudes, began on or around April 23. The creation of the 10k club, the official club of 3 and 4 character digit ENS holders, activated FOMO for 3 and 4 digit ENS domains. Its memetic power aligned a community behind this trend. It supercharged ENS registrations.
Scarcity drives value behind 3 and 4 digit ENS domains. Since then, ENS domains like 555.eth have sold for over 55.5 eth, around $158,000 USD at the time of purchase.
Supporters of 3 and 4 digit ENS domains have even developed their own rally:
It is impossible to know exactly what the second and third order catalysts of this movement will be. Whatever the case, we know that Culture is rallying behind the ENS Protocol.
What differentiates the ENS domain from other NFT projects is its potential to reshape industry worldwide. As the overall infrastructure matures, industries worldwide will be built on top of the ENS Protocol.
Read, write and own
The ENS Protocol serves as a user’s passport to the decentralized web. An ENS Domain is unique in that it doubles as a Non-Fungible Token. It maps human-readable domains like oakgroup.eth to machine-readable identifiers (cryptocurrency addresses). Unlike most other Non-Fungible Tokens, an ENS Domain has real world utility.
ENS domains are not just domain names, they serve as an online identity on the decentralized net. ENS domains are also used to login to several platforms such as Uniswap and Mirror. They’re also used to send and receive cryptocurrency.
Businesses can launch, host and structure digital assets from their ENS domain. Businesses can also issue subdomains to its employees or community members. Endless permutations. In the proximal future, all the world’s businesses will transact via their ENS.
Major brands like Budweiser and Puma have already entered the play, launching their own Web3 projects using their ENS domains. As society continues to make the shift towards cryptocurrencies and decentralized platforms, brands who own their ENS domain will be at a major advantage.
Those same brands launching their NFT projects will have their own cultural moments as well, helping to galvanize the whole of civilization into downloading their first cryptocurrency wallet.
Sovereignty Reimagined
The original vision of the Internet buoyed an open, decentralized architecture. A peer to peer system where users held equipotent participation throughout the network. As demand grew, service providers moved away from a P2P system to a Client-Server model. This led to the disenfranchisement of participants on the network.
Despite our Orwellian Present, the advent of cryptographic technologies has rekindled decentralized initiatives. The ENS Protocol is the ark to a decentralized web. It allows any user to build and reimagine the Internet to their will.
ENS is open source, for the community and managed by a not for profit organization. Community participation is key to building a decentralized infrastructure. One free from exploitative and extractive methodologies that dominated industry since the 20th century.
ENS Protocol
As we near mainstream adoption, it’s important to understand the difference between ENS and its Web2 counterpart. Unlike DNS, The ENS Protocol is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). That means that no central entity has full control over the protocol. Instead, the ENS is governed through its token, $ENS.
Because it runs on the Ethereum Blockchain, ENS is interoperable with every decentralized application. That means that the ENS domain is the single point of entry to DAOs, NFTs and DeFi.
Holders of $ENS can vote, draft and submit proposals to communicate and officiate the direction of the organization. All revenue generated through ENS domain registration goes back to the DAO’s treasury. The funds are used to build ENS’ ecosystem.
Public Goods are Good
While the cynosure around ENS has been its surge of ENS secondaries, it is vital to refocus on its actual value.
The real opportunity rests in the realization that anyone can participate in the ENS ecosystem. The ENS DAO was established exactly for this purpose. It encourages all people to build on-top of its ecosystem and launch their own Web3 based businesses via the ENS domain.
Fundamentally, The ENS’ goal is to onboard and educate the world on the utility behind The ENS Protocol. To do this, the ENS DAO has formed four working groups since its inception in November 2021:
» Meta-Governance
Provides administrative support and assists in governance of the DAO and its working groups.
» ENS Ecosystem
Development of The ENS Protocol with a focus on technical matters as it relates to ENS
» Community
Identifying and supporting organizations that utilize ENS to help grow the general ecosystem
» Public Goods
Funding of public goods within the ENS ecosystem and Web3 overall
Getting involved is easy. Join the discussion on The ENS Forum, jump into their Discord and introduce yourselves to one of the many stewards.
Conclusion
When Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the OG Internet, first proposed a distributed hypertext system in 1989, he envisioned a world where information would become open and globally accessible. The Web2 version of The Internet is far from what Lee envisioned in his original proposal to CERN.
Today, corporate backed servers publish and distribute information en masse. To appease stakeholders, FAANG companies have developed Walled Gardens, where users live blissfully unaware of how these corporate entities unethically harvest their personal data for their own benefit.
The ENS Protocol is the foundation for a paradigm shift, where users of the Internet can become owners. It represents an opportunity for the community to align themselves around a vision of an open and globally decentralized society. One where its interests benefits the entirety of civilization, not just a select few.