Linking The Distributed Web With The Centralised Web — The Web Returns To Its Roots

Ethereum is a wonderful trust infrastructure, and where those who contribute to its security and trustworthiness — the miners — are actually rewarded for their work. Contrast that with the centralised web — such as with Meta — and where those who contribute to the network are the ones who make massive profits for the shareholders of the company.

To move towards a decentralised world of identity, Ethereum currently implements the ENSv1 system — and which is a Layer 1 integration. This consists of a registry with resolvers and registrars. A registry is the contract where the entity is registered. An owner of an ENS name can then define the resolver address and create subdomains. A resolver is then responsible for performing a lookup for a name and returning its contract address (or content hash for IPFS).

When a resolution of an ENS name is required, the ENS registry will be involved to resolve the name. On finding the record, the registry returns the resolver address, and which will return the required result.

Here is my ENS name, and which links to my Ethereum mainnet address [here]: