Gasless Subdomains: The Key to Global ENS Adoption

The internet did not take the world by storm until it was easy to use. It took time and development to switch from searching 142.250.183.46 to google.com. Like the internet, web3 is making the switch from machine-friendly addresses like 0xb4ab2…2391 to human-readable usernames like slobo.eth with the help of ENS.

Historically, worldwide adoption of ENS domains has been infeasible. Traditional ENS domains face challenges that make them inaccessible to many. However, new blockchain developments, paired with the services of NameStone, have made it possible to issue gasless ENS names to everyone.

Traditional on-chain ENS names can be expensive to own. The gas fees required to register, edit, and renew a name each year make it inaccessible to many around the world. In addition to pricey gas fees, if all 8 billion of us decided to register an ENS name, it would take 33 years and consume every block on the Ethereum mainnet. The following chart depicts the estimated cost of owning a traditional ENS name.

If we want ENS to be accessible to everyone, we need another solution.

Thanks to the CCIP-read standard (ERC-3668) and ENS wildcard resolution (ENSIP-10), people can claim (and issue) gasless ENS names. Unlike traditional ENS domain names, CCIP-read allows data to be pulled from off-chain sources like cloud servers, removing the need for gas fees. Coinbase has leveraged these resources to issue over 2 million gasless ENS names.

While this is significant, it would require a decent investment in engineering resources to replicate. It took Coinbase months, if not longer, to issue gasless subdomains to their community.

Luckily, NameStone can help you issue your own gasless subdomains in less than a day.

With NameStone, anyone can leverage CCIP-read to issue gasless ENS subdomains to their communities. Great examples include PoolTogether and ByWassies, who used NameStone to issue ENS names to their members.

ENS is the world’s leading domain name service. With NameStone, your community can claim .eth usernames that decentralized apps recognize around the world.

There are 100s of integrations that work with ENS names. A few prominent examples are Rainbow Wallet, Uniswap Wallet, Mailchain, Etherscan, Metamask, and more.

With subdomains, the parent name is the same for all community members, allowing for quick searches and connection with one another. For example, someone who owns slobo.wassies.eth can search for wassies.eth in places like social sites to find other wassies.

People change their usernames on sites like Twitter to their ENS name, like tim.wassies.eth, to indicate their belonging to a group. This effect broadcasts your brand’s name to the world.

In contrast to other companies who offer user-friendly wallet creation services, NameStone offers usernames, a term web2 users are already familiar with. Having the username emily.nfty.eth instead of 0x1ca2…1023 makes transitioning to web3 simpler.

Businesses have full control over the requirements to claim subdomains. Reward current members with early access or offer names to new users who commit to your brand (by holding tokens, for example).

NameStone is founded by Alex Slobodnik, who’s been working with ENS DAO since its beginning. Reach out to Alex on Twitter or Telegram to learn more about NameStone's powerful API and start issuing gasless subdomains today.