Spotlight: NameBazaar.io 2.0, the most up-to-date web3 marketplace for ENS names — Coming Soon!
Anticipating district0x’s revamped Ethereum Name Service Exchange dapp
Maybe one of the most overlooked developments in the crypto world are crypto domain names, ENS — Ethereum Name Service domains. ENS names are blockchain wallet addresses neatly packaged as NFTs which can be registered on the blockchain and then traded on the open market. But the wizardry doesn’t stop there.
Remember when you created your first gamertag? Or when you bought your first internet domain name? Of course you do! Well what if, instead of receiving friend requests and game invites, you ‘Xxcryptoconnoisseur69xX’ could also receive peer2peer crypto payments to your web3 wallet, and even integrate it as a domain name for your website. I mean who wouldn’t want to type ‘cryptogoblin.eth’ into their browser?! ENS names are a one stop solution for an important problem: how can I connect my website to my web3 wallet, and seamlessly integrate web3? ENS names allow for any web domain to receive Ethereum payments straight to the domain —by connecting it to the blockchain. Think of the domain as being a wallet address while also being a domain name.
But how does ENS work?
The ENS or Ethereum Name Service is a system that was created to provide shorter, more human-friendly names in place of long cryptographic addresses. With ENS, you’ll be able to send money to a friend at ‘mycoolwallet.eth’ instead of the super complicated, hyper unnecessary long cryptographic hash starting with ‘0x’, such as ‘0x4abv577c502eFbCD…’. Not only is this easier to remember, easier to communicate and just a hell of a lot simpler to understand for newcomers, but it is also much more useful since the ENS effectively bridge the gap between web2 and web3 by merging both into one user experience.
ENS is built on Ethereum, its smart contracts make it a protocol. Since the eth blockchain and its protocols are completely decentralized, it does not suffer from the same lack of security the DNS system does. Anyone can register a ‘.eth’ domain name for themselves by participating in an auction process (highest bidder wins), mediated by the blockchain.
ENS has a registry smart contract that keeps track of domain names, sub-domains, owners, resolvers, etc. The registry is the backbone of ENS. The other key component of ENS is the resolver. Resolvers are responsible for translating names into addresses, it must handle cryptocurrency addresses, IPFS content hash, user profile, avatar, etc. Getting data from ENS is a two-step process. First, we need to find the correct resolver from the registry by passing the ENS domain name to the register, which returns the address of the resolver, then we ask for the desired data from this resolver.
Think of ENS as a revolution! Remember when the internet started out there were no email addresses, there were only IP addresses. ENS is to blockchain what email is to the internet. In this sense ENS is rumored to be the onboarding tool for the masses — it will open the floodgates to an ecosystem that still seems cryptic and ‘too technical’ to the average person with moderate computer skills. Once ENS will be widely used, it will be normal to share your ‘mycoolwallet.eth’ address with your mates to get that 10 bucks back you lend them the other day at the club. No one will even think of it as being a blockchain cryptographic hash anymore.
So, what else can you do with ENS?
Trade ENS names on NameBazaar.io 2.0?
Remember rocking up to the auction house and checking what the prices of mats were for your next upgrade (yes, I’m talking about you, WoW gamers). Well the same can be done for ENS names in district0x’s NameBazaar Dapp. Want to check what people are bidding on, or looking to scoop up a new address? Both ‘bid’ and ‘buy’ buttons are ready to be clicked at your disposal. In web3, ENS names become assets and a new market emerges — trade at your own risk!
NameBazaar.io is a peer-to-peer marketplace with no fees for the exchange of names registered with the Ethereum Name Service, via an auction-style user interface. Users of Name Bazaar will be able to find, buy, sell, request or track the status of any ENS Name, even unregistered names. NameBazaar.io offers trust-less and secure peer-to-peer name trading on the public Ethereum blockchain without gatekeepers or middle-man, it is a truly decentralized marketplace, living on IPFS, non-custodial and censorship resistant as one would expect from district0x’s d0xINFRA.
Oh and did I mention there are no fees? lol
While all new features of Name Bazaar 2.0 are yet to be announced, we know that the dev team is working on stripping away any outdated features and restoring full support for the latest ENS protocol updates: ‘Most of the new additions are on the backend for future upgradability, but basically we made it work with the new upgrades on the ENS protocol’.
So what does this mean?… Well, we shall be getting new features in the future, and one could speculate that some sort of DeFi integration is on the horizon, but for now we shall be anticipating a nice, robust, fully functioning marketplace for ENS domains-as-NFTs.
Sneak Peak!
However, they didn’t leave us completely empty handed! Here’s a sneak peek: ‘we’re working on a name wrapper contract — it’ll make all names ERC1155 compatible tokens once they’re wrapped. It also permits adding restrictions to names, so that you can safely issue subdomains and prospective buyers can verify that they can’t be revoked.’
Now some of you may be thinking ‘hang on, what is this mysterious “wrapper” thing they speak of?’ Now imagine you have an unbranded piece of chocolate, believe me this will tie back into blockchain, just stay with me. Next, you wish to have the chocolate recognized as your favorite brand (e.g. Reese’s), so you take an empty wrapper and place the chocolate inside of it. If you were then to ask anyone what chocolate it is, it shall be recognized as Reese’s, despite us knowing the piece contained within is another type. Now if we apply this to the new ENS wrapper contract - we can take any token we have purchased, for this instance let’s go with ‘Brady.eth’ (our @dappdigest king as a ERC721) and we can then wrap Brady.eth up in another Ethereum token standard with different parameters and permissions. This will make Brady.eth more widely accepted and compatible and help for integrations across various dapps and usecases. No matter what token standard decentralized applications use, ENS names can be linked to it as an Ethereum address on the blockchain. SEE — I promised it would come back to blockchain technology, I’m not completely crazy!!!
In conclusion, for the time being the updated version of NameBazaar.io shall remain fairly vanilla — easy to use and easy to understand, to make onboarding easy for the next generation of crypto pioneers. Yet, a stronger integration with what’s on the horizon for the ENS protocol and Ethereum in general will make for a cutting edge dapp ready to take on the next wave of ENS adoption! We simply have to be patient as the dev team continues #buidl-ing. If you have any ideas you want to contribute to the project, leave a review or contribute to the open source git repository for name bazaar, link with the team on discord.gg/d0x
Joining the district0x DAO
For more information about the district0x network:
- Head to our Onboarding Terminal for all links at a glance
- Check out our Education Portal for all things #web3
- Join the official Discord server or Telegram channel
- Watch our YouTube intro video and live streams on Twitch.tv
- Subscribe to email updates or to our subreddit forum
- Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
BUT WAIT! WE ARE NOT DONE!
As a personal thank you to you beautiful readers who made it until here, I wanted to play my part by sending 10DNT to the first 5 people that join the discord and tell me the gamertag used in this article. A huge thank you to everyone that took the time to read this post, let’s continue to buidl together. — rasukix
