Nick Johnson, the founder of Ethereum Name Service (ENS), was pleasantly surprised when he received double the amount of capital he had requested from Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum. Johnson shared his thoughts on the development of ENS, a project that enables users to create human-readable Web3 addresses that function as both a Web3 wallet for cryptocurrencies and NFTs, as well as a domain for decentralized websites, during an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph at ETHGlobal in London.
Before delving into the world of Ethereum, Johnson, a software engineer from New Zealand, had worked for Google. However, he was captivated by Ethereum’s programmability, which led him to experiment with Ethereum coding in his personal capacity. With a strong background in infrastructure, tooling, and libraries, he was able to create his own Ethereum strings library.
A string is a programming data type that represents text, such as a sequence of characters consisting of letters, numbers, symbols, and spaces. String manipulation, according to front-end software engineer Jeffrey Jenkinson, is one of the most complex tasks in software development. He explained that developers often need to parse human-readable code into machine language, which begins with string manipulation.
Eventually, Johnson was hired by the Ethereum Foundation, and one of his initial projects was to develop the name service. Initially working for the EthSwarm team, which focused on decentralized data storage and distribution technology, Johnson was tasked with addressing a gap in the infrastructure. He shared, “There was a shortfall they had identified; their content needed naming. I said well, so does everything else, accounts and so on. So that became my project there. When I moved off the swarm team and onto the Go Ethereum (Geth) team, I kept it on as my side project.”
Encouraged by the Ethereum Foundation, Johnson established a separate organization funded by a grant to work full-time on the ENS project. He drafted a rough two-year roadmap and budget for a small team. However, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, intervened and provided double the requested funding. Johnson expressed his gratitude, stating, “I was taken aback when Vitalik said, ‘No, actually, we’re going to double it. We think this is a good project, we want to see you succeed.'”
Since its launch, over two million ENS addresses have been registered by users. However, Johnson believes that this metric is not as significant as other measurements that are more difficult to quantify. He is more interested in determining the percentage of users who are entering crypto addresses into their wallets instead of traditional DNS names.
While he expects a gradual increase in the number of registered ENS names, Johnson’s focus is on bringing the service to networks that can benefit from Web3 functionality. He explained, “ENS needs to come to users where they are, so to speak. If there is a new distributed content network that is being widely used by users, then ENS should support it. We need to be there to allow people to experience that improvement in usability.”
In the next few years, ENS plans to introduce Ethereum layer-2 infrastructure, and Johnson’s goal is to make the service more user-friendly and “plug-and-play.” He envisions a future where ENS seamlessly integrates with various platforms, making it easier for users to access and utilize its features.