ℹ️2.1 Ether Domain Name Services (EDNS)

In the traditional Internet world, domain name services (DNS) are hosted by a large organization called Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is headquartered in the USA. The primary purpose of DNS is to translate human-readable domain names to corresponding IP addresses, which identify resources on the Internet. With the growth of cyber-attacks, the mapped IP address can redirect to an unsecured location if the DNS servers are hacked and data leakage may occur as a result.

Thus, blockchain-based naming systems have evolved to replace the traditional DNS. The decentralized network enables the development of a new, open, and decentralized naming service on the blockchain. EDNS is a Polygon-based decentralized domain naming service that improves upon traditional Domain Name Services (DNS). The purpose is to cater to members of the blockchain industry by providing a digital identity through the issued decentralized domains. EDNS assists individual members and businesses in representing themselves with personalised domains names online. Utilizing decentralized technology, EDNS provides an upgraded service to the current Internet by providing increased privacy, non-censorship, ownership, and security.

Moreover, the decentralized domain names offered by EDNS are created in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They are cryptographic assets on a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other and are resaleable on NFT secondary markets. With each transaction, the owner can mint the domain name to the designated hash address within the relevant network. EDNS currently hosts its domains on the MATIC (Polygon) network and plans to support other popular EVM-based public blockchains, including BSC Chain, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, etc.

Currently, users can register their domain name using top-level domains including .meta, .404, .music, .sandbox, and .ass with the smart contract based on the ERC-721 token standard. These accept a domain name as a method argument, and namehashing, an algorithm that converts a domain name into a classical format, is defined as a part of the EIP-137 standard. Fundamentally, namehashing is a one-way operation. It recursively hashes the labels using the SHA-256 hash function. If one possesses a pre-computed table of all hashes and corresponding domains, reverse lookups are possible. The following diagram explains the interaction between EDNS Registry and EDNS Resolvers.

Interaction between EDNS Registry and EDNS Resolvers

The EDNS Registry stores the owner’s address, the approved operator address, the resolver address, and the domain name. In addition, the EDNS Registry's smart contract can also include a set of methods for minting new domains and subdomains and managing ownership.

A resolver is a smart contract to resolve domains and store domain records. This is where domain owners store data, such as cryptocurrency addresses, mobile phone numbers, and storage hashes for decentralized websites.

Under the surface, the EDNS Resolver is effectively a map of domain namehashes to key-value dictionaries of records. This structure allows members to store arbitrary records, even those not specified by the Records reference. EDNS Resolver enables domain owners to approve addresses and operators to edit records of their owned domains. EDNS Resolver also provides an interface for getting standardized records, making accessing general information about their domains easier.