Ethereum is on a tear, currently trading at $1,652. I subscribe to a crypto research service which values cryptos on a fundamental level and another service where professional traders post their technical analysis and strategies. Both services are bullish on ETH, so I am long ETH.
More importantly, since I’m so distracted with other stuff in life, I would like to use this opportunity to learn and think more about DeFi. I recently learned of the Ethereum Name Service where you can register a human readable name like cryptodude.eth which basically forwards to your wallet address. The registration cost was minimal (.003 ETH which is currently ~$5), but the gas fee was like .03 ETH which is like $50! I don’t quite understand how it was calculated because it also says the gas price is based on 104-163 GWEI which is a lot less than .03 ETH. Perhaps there’s some multiplier for this particular contract?
There is a major need for gas fees to go down. On a side note, I just learned GWEI is 1 billionth of 1 ETH. Also, why is it that I can only use 1 of 5 wallets, of which I’ve only heard of one. Why isn’t Metamask an option? Why can’t I use a Coinbase wallet (they probably have not integrated WalletLink)?
How do I know these are secure? Also, WalletConnect and WalletLink are so similar, I think it would be super easy for someone to mess something up between the two.
I do want to register a name on ENS, but it’s kind of annoying that I can’t just send ETH to an address. I don’t want to setup a new wallet and send money there and pay gas fees to get that setup. I also for some reason don’t trust putting money into a wallet that is integrated into my browser via an extension (it just feels insecure). However, if 1Password is an extension, and I trust that, then I suppose I can trust a wallet extension (assuming it was built with security top of mind).
ENS seems like a really cool idea. It supports a lot of cryptos, so you can add addresses for other cryptocurrencies and receive crypto via the registered name. I believe you can also link an IPFS address, so it’s a link to your website. It also supports subdomains, so for example chainlink has an ENS name data.eth where subdomains are used to provide prices for various cryptos (i.e. eth-usd.data.eth).
One thing I’d like to explore is how ENS actually works. From what I briefly read, there’s a registry smart contract and then contracts for each resolver. Need to spend some time understanding what that means exactly and how that works. For example, how can the registry smart contract hold potentially millions of domain names?
Hopefully by my next update I will have registered a name on ENS.