From Domains to Usernames - Mely.eth

Transcript

[Music] start a conference. That was definitely a very interesting talk. Thank you for that. And I feel like I should just continue with everything I hate about Ethereum name servers instead. That would be something. Yes. Um my name is Melissa. I'm currently part of the growth team at Ian Labs and uh I actually go by Melly. there and I prepared the presentation from domains to usernames for you and this title can be interpreted in different ways and we will cover at least two or three of the contexts in the next few

minutes. This is my first talk ever. So I took some notes and um the reason why I'm standing here is because I want to invite you to think with me about the whole concept of identity and maybe even find some new perspective throughout this talk. And just to get a feeling of the kind of room we're in, who from the audience actually owns an IA's name? Please raise your hand.

Okay, that's a lot. It makes makes my life so much easier. So, thank you. Um, yeah. Okay, we do find ourselves at a critical point in the development of identity. The physical idea of it is tied to uh the traditional idea of it is tied to physical documents and it has been questioned by the birth of online identity a long time ago and it continues to be questioned by the rise of decentralized identity systems. Physical identification. In simple words, the

government and constitutions um hold the keys to your personal identification through documents like birth certificates, passports, and social security numbers. And the reality is that traditional identity leaves almost no room for individual autonomy, especially in highly bureaucratic systems where the state has significant control over personal verification.

The internet brought a whole new dimension to the concept of identity and the expansion of social media really change the perspectives and the way we relate to each other as well. Suddenly, maybe for the first time ever, human identity has become flexible. Virtually a user can be who they want to be and that online presence starts by picking a username. Nowadays, if someone decides to become a creator online or start a

project online, the first thing they do is go to all these different um platforms and secure the handles. and then they pick two or maximum three of their preferred platforms and build their reputation on them. But if one of those services shuts down, the user doesn't only lose their account but also the whole network they have built over time.

And besides of the fact that these usernames only serve one purpose, which is to log into a specific uh platform, these names don't really belong to the user at all and can be taken away from you and vanish at any time. And we've seen this happen multiple times in the past year where a user would lose the handle to someone famous or the highest bidder for that handle without even knowing until the name is actually gone and without having any chance of actually defending the this kind of

ownership over that name. And this is where onchain identity comes into play. But before we go into that, another thing I want to add here which I think is not talked about enough is the gap between newer generations and older generations. We have generations growing up right now that care about their online identity and online presence just as much as their IRL one. And wouldn't it make sense then that with the increasing importance, users actually gain ownership and rights to that online

presence. And that's what we tackle with onchain identity. Onchain identity aims to create a universal standard for naming and identity where the names are actually owned by the user and also managed by them and these names live on Ethereum. Unlike traditional forms of online identity, um onchain identity is portable, which means you can actually use your name in different ecosystems and platforms instead of going through every single app and securing your name

there. And this is where ENS comes in because it's possible to do this today. ENS stands for Ethereum Name Service and was founded in 2017 to translate wallet addresses into a simple name. It's a decentral decentralized name that is owned and managed by the user. It lives on Ethereum and instead of sending tokens to a wallet address that starts with ox something, you can just receive and send crypto via a name like

mele.eth. And we all know the saying, not your keys, not your crypto. The same thing applies to your name. Not your keys, not your name. And even though the name lives on Ethereum, it works multi-chain on many different other chains and L2s and on many different apps today. Over 750 apps and projects already resolve ENS names. So if you own one name, you don't need to go to all these platforms and claim a different username. You can just take your ENS name with you to any platform

that has fully integrated ENS. So this is a quote I really like to use. ENS is our most successful non-financial application. And what I like to highlight here is actually the non-financial part. Why? Because as a non-financial product, ENS actually has a very low entry barrier when it comes to onboarding new users to crypto. Everyone who's ever been online understands the concept of a username.

And the concept of an onchain username is not that far off and usually very easy to understand. The usual reaction to explaining ENS to someone who's never heard of crypto is, "Oh, it makes sense." And that's where you uh kind of start your journey into blockchain and crypto. So yeah, back to the title from domains to usernames is a domain and a username.

You can host a website by adding an IPFS content hash and point the website to something like Mellie. But you can also add records for your ENOS profile and add information like a bio, a profile picture, um your social media links or other contact data and use it as a profile. And that's also the first key point and first interpretation of this um talk. Yes, the duality of eith names. The other question I would like to pose here is if also a domain, what role do traditional domains actually

play in this whole vision that is currently developing? So traditional domains like com.net and.io had their prime time especially in the 90s and early 2000s where domain registrations exploded like crazy. And today we have over 350 million registered and active domains.

And one could say that the web has matured over time and those who wanted a domain mostly had one. What I like to show you here in comparison is this graph for usernames. So this scale is in billions and the one before was in millions. Usernames took over on a whole different level than domains. While URLs were the dominant form of contact for businesses and individuals, usernames now reach a number of over five billion.

And to me that clearly shows that this is the preferred medium. And it also means that profiles are preferred over websites and also brings us to the second interpretation of from domains to usernames. the trends and user behaviors that we see that go from domain popularity, website popularity to profile. The domain space, the traditional domain space kind of missed the opportunity to evolve alongside these user behaviors and is kind of left behind in the whole

uh conversation. A good example for this is for example when a restaurant has a Google Maps account. This Google Maps account includes the exact location, reviews, a menu, pictures, contact data, a description, everything a normal website would usually have, but instead it's a Google Maps account, a profile that acts as a page and replaces the traditional website that we know so far.

It doesn't sound that great for domains, but the good thing is actually that traditional domains can be expanded through the ENS protocol. Online identity is constantly evolving and is now turning into onchain identity. And the ENS protocol opens the door for DNS to actually join that conversation and participate in the development of onchain identity. Your com can be easily integrated into the ENS protocol and the easiest way to do it right now is to just go to Godaddy if you own a domain and then you follow step one to three and you can add ENS features to your DNS domain in under

five minutes. And essentially we are inviting and opening the DNS space to evolve alongside profiles and user trends and um not ignore this. This is also the third interpretation of the title from domains to user names importing DNS names to the ENS protocol and making your domain an onchain identity. Nothing really changes about your domain. Your website will still function the same. Your certificates will all be valuable um valid and

nothing will change there. But what you add to your com or any other imported uh TLD is wallet resolution which means you can receive and send crypto with your DNS domain and actually turn it into sorry into an onchain profile. My mouth is so dry. So yes, all in all this means that ENS doesn't necessarily replace DNS but actually extends its functionalities and becomes that onchain identity layer for the whole DNS space as well.

So in total from domains to usernames includes ETH your multi-chain identity that can serve as a domain and a username the import of DNS domains to Ethereum thanks to DNSAC and the ENS protocol and user behavior trends. the shift from websites to profiles, from domains to usernames. ENS has changed a lot in the past eight years and what started with

translating wallet addresses into simple names evolved into the layer for so many successful namespaces like base names and unis swap usernames. And now to make these namespaces fully interoperable and truly functional, ENS is slowly turning into something I personally like to call the network of identity with namechain. The foundation of it is this.

Every ENS name, no matter if it's a ETH or DNS, that was important, has the ability to enable a whole name space and therefore create its own ecosystem. Here's an example with linear.eth and the subdomain user.linear.eth. Yes. Why do we need this? Because global networks that we use every day, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media networks don't necessarily offer global

naming systems. And the good thing is that if you build a community or an app where your users create profiles, you don't need to start from scratch and use so many more resources in time. The ENS protocol is easily into integrated into your app. And the good thing is that these usernames actually can be used in other ecosystems as well. And my throat is killing me right now. We're almost done though.

Yes. So many upsides. If you are building for users, then your app lives and dies with your community. And your users deserve the best experience and the highest standard when it comes to profiles and naming. And that includes that the names are human readable. So if someone logs into your platform and their account is named after an ox address, you're doing something wrong.

The profiles also need to offer crosschain cont uh com compatibility and should be portable. So one name should be enough for all ecosystems. And this all should happen within the laws and rules of the traditional web domain system. And of course one name should be enough to interact with all chains and L2s. And luckily this is already possible today with ENS and onchain identity. Thank you.

[Applause] [Music]