Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has changed the name of his official Twitter profile to his ENS (Ethereum Name Service).
His Twitter profile is now called vitalik.eth, and this is surely a way to promote the service that allows associating an Ethereum address with a name of choice, easy to remember, with the extension .eth.
This trend has been spreading in recent weeks: the registration of an ENS under one’s own name to be used, for example, on Twitter.
Ethereum Name Service is the primary naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain and which uses smart contracts. It is even proposed as the Internet naming infrastructure of the future.
In fact, theoretically, ENS can provide names for anything, although at this time it is used primarily to allow people to have an easy-to-remember name for their crypto addresses.
ENS, in fact, redirects to decentralised IPFS websites and allows to give a name to ETH, BTC, LTC, DOGE addresses, or to personal information such as an email address or a personal website.
This functionality has actually existed for more than two years, but at the beginning, it was only used for Ethereum addresses. To date, however, there are only a few dozen wallets that support it, and a few dApps.
Whereas the multi-coin support was launched recently, allowing it to be used with other cryptocurrencies.
However, ENS should be used with caution, because by disclosing their names with the extension .eth, users are actually communicating publicly all the addresses associated with it. Therefore, it is advisable to use them only to publicly display addresses that are not intended to be kept private.
At present, there are already several dozen public ENS, including some decentralised IPFS websites, some dApps and the addresses of some people or some services.
The hashtag #ENSeverywhere has also been coined to promote the spread, although to be honest, it doesn’t seem to be enjoying any particular success at the moment.