Ethereum Name Service parent company ENS Labs Ltd. today announced plans to launch its own layer 2 scaling network for its blockchain-based name service.
The new network is called Namechain, and ENS Labs said it intends to launch the it around the end of the year.
According to the company, the blockchain network will use zero-knowledge rollups, or ZK-rollups, a type of scaling technology designed to process transactions off the main chain and convert them to cryptographic proofs that can then be submitted back to the main blockchain. This is done by “rolling” multiple transactions up in a secondary, or layer 2, blockchain in valid batches and then sending them all at once to the main blockchain, in this case, Ethereum.
“This technology allows Namechain to process and execute transactions off of the main Ethereum network while still inheriting the full security of Ethereum, but at a fraction of the cost,” ENS Labs said in a press release.
Chief Operating Officer Katherine Wu, told CoinDesk the ENS Labs team is still in the final stages of choosing which ZK-rollup Ethereum virtual machine the company will use to complete this process. By overhauling the current architecture of ENS, it will change how the current process works but help speed up transactions and reduce costs.
“The heavy technical lift here will be in making sure that Namechain is backward compatible with ENSv1 (the current setup on Ethereum mainnet) from day one of launch,” Wu said. “[To] a user, there should be no difference on the front end/user experience as we launch Namechain, except for lower gas fees.”
ENS acts as the blockchain version of the web’s domain name system. Just like web domain names need to change from Google.com or Amazon.com to IP addresses to make the internet work, ENS names change readable names into Ethereum wallet addresses. For example, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin’s ENS name is Vitalik.eth, which is easier to type than his Ethereum address: 0xd8dA6BF26964aF9D7eEd9e03E53415D37aA96045.
“Namechain represents ENS’ next evolution, and I’m excited for the huge improvements it will bring in scalability and cost, and the new applications it will enable,” said co-founder and lead developer Nick Johnson.
Numerous projects in the blockchain industry have been building layer 2 networks to help scale their networks. This is because Ethereum, although a popular landing spot for blockchain projects, suffers from transaction congestion. This causes slow speeds and high fees when attempting to build apps on the main blockchain.
Examples include Uniswap Labs, the developer behind the most popular decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, launching an application-specific layer 2 network and Coinbase Inc.’s launch of Base, a developer-friendly Ethereum layer 2 network.
Image: Pixabay
Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.
One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.
Join our community on YouTube
Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.
THANK YOU
