Picture this: You’re at a conference. You meet someone interesting, and they hand you their business card. But instead of a name, it’s a 40-character string. Awkward, right?

How do you remember that person? How do you navigate the world without a name? Enter the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), your digital passport to the decentralized world.

Just like a passport identifies you and lets you travel across borders, ENS identifies you in Web3 and lets you interact effortlessly across dApps and services. Without it, you’re lost in the sea of unknown.

Have you ever tried sharing your Ethereum wallet address with someone? It looks something like this: 0x5c8f… and goes on for another 36 characters. Not exactly user-friendly. What if you could replace that string of randomness with something like yourname.eth? Now, it’s easy to remember, easy to share, and yours.

I wrote about this a while ago on What is Ethereum for me. We identify with ourselves using names. There’s a particular way of naming people inside Ethereum. For example, my ENS is juandav.eth, the last three letters are a sign of the family I feel part of. My first name is Juandavid, I shortened it to juandav and stated my last name as .eth.

Playing with id = eth.

In the decentralized world, your name is more than just a string; it’s about owning your digital identity. So, why settle for a 0x + 40-character string when you have a name?

Because in the end, it’s not just about being cog in the system, it’s about being onchain.