Ethereum name service, more commonly known as ENS.
In ethereum address appear like 0x233eb...042, ENS let's you associate a human readable name like nick.eth with that address.
Works similar to DNS, turning IP addresses into something we humans recognize.
What's the pro of using a smart contract? (DNS works without one).
With a smart contract you can have immutable data store (assuming ethereum continues) that can give you ownership over your name, like nick.eth.
What's the con?
It's immutable which means people can own names they shouldn't with no mediation process possible.
Like a lot of things in life the system is good as long the system works for you, but not everyone is lucky enough to exist in a system that works well enough.
I posted the sibling comment basically dumping on smart contracts, so I wanted to thank you very much for posting this - it helped me understand smart contracts better in my mind and helped crystallize places where they could be useful.
I knew vaguely about ENS (primarily just by seeing .eth addresses), but your comment led me to dig in to how it works. I think the bit of "eureka" moment I had is that smart contracts are really only useful for shuffling around ownership of "pure data", and then it's up to everyone else to interpret what that data actually means.
That is, for an eth name, it's really just storing an association of the name with another piece of data, and putting a mechanism in place for who gets to control that association (i.e. how bidding for a name works). It's then up to other people to decide how (or whether) they want to "interpret" that association. In my mind it's quite similar to NFTs. All NFTs really store is an association that says "this person 'owns' this other piece of data called X, and that other piece of data X actually refers to this shitty digital image of a bored ape." But, of course anyone else can copy the bits of that shitty digital image and do whatever they want with it - it's only if enough people agree that "yes, that NFT really does mean that shitty digital image" for it to be worth anything.
It also helped me because with most contracts people think about how "things in the real world" need to be verified in order to determine contract performance (did the price of wheat go up, was the vacation rental as advertised), but smart contracts really are quite useless in those examples. But there are some examples where you're just storing pieces of data and you do not care about what happens "in the real world". Thus, I still feel smart contracts are often greatly oversold (and often misunderstood) by their boosters, but there are specific "data-mapping" use cases where they make sense. I also appreciate that you pointed out the downsides of not having a mediation process, which I think many crypto boosters think of as a feature but many people feel is a bug in the real world.
Anyway, you really helped me think about this more clearly, and I appreciate it.
Thanks, much appreciated! I wish I could enjoy it more, but something about the attitude that got me here keeps me moving forward. I'm the kind of person that always needs to be doing something which I consider of value, or else I feel like I am wasting my life.
>>how does a decentralized coin implement KYC for a wallet-to-wallet transfer like you mention?
>the KYC comes during off ramps back to the fiat system
And here we have your answer. It doesn't. In fact using your own logic, I could argue Tornado Cash is KYC'd 'because at offramp' which of course is absurd.
Now that you've made it crystal clear your use case does not include dai implementing KYC, I return to my thesis: DAI is imminently dead by .gov pulling a Tornado Cash on all the underlying centralized collateral locked up in DAI.
I hope you're right, but we seem to be sliding further into the dystopia, not out of it. Notice as time marches on the shrinking number of 'blacklist' FATF countries and the end of non-KYC/AML finance world-wide. IMO dai will go the way of bearer bonds and shares. The fact that all that underlying capital is in real-world bonds/paper/notes means cooperative financial task forces have these stablecoins by the balls and soon they will start squeezing.
would i rather have an entity that i have no power against (google) or only my own error? the outcome is the same, i had x, now i don't. personally, i'd prefer being responsible, but it is a by a thin margin.
that being said, key management has and will continue to get easier. so over time, the risk of key loss should diminish.
> Personally, I'd prefer being responsible, but it is a by a thin margin.
I'd wager that's not the case for 90% of users choosing the email provider they trust the most, both in terms of what they expect the risks are, and what they actually risk in practice.
> key management has and will continue to get easier
You're talking about the blockchain space where it was not even the state of the art when it started. Key management remains a problem in all spaces, but it has even more dramatic consequences when you have no recourse.
they can pick a different name, i don't really understand what solution you are advocating. that no one can be vitalik because there are more than one?
I'm actually not advocating for a solution, because I don't know of one. My point was only that OPs statement of "ENS domains are memorable" is only true for early adopters. Later adopters won't have that luxury. The same thing played out with the .com domain, which is why so many companies use non-.com domains these days, because it is not straightforward to get a memorable domain in .com.
In ethereum address appear like 0x233eb...042, ENS let's you associate a human readable name like nick.eth with that address.
Works similar to DNS, turning IP addresses into something we humans recognize.
What's the pro of using a smart contract? (DNS works without one).
With a smart contract you can have immutable data store (assuming ethereum continues) that can give you ownership over your name, like nick.eth.
What's the con?
It's immutable which means people can own names they shouldn't with no mediation process possible.
Like a lot of things in life the system is good as long the system works for you, but not everyone is lucky enough to exist in a system that works well enough.
Crypto* is trying to make things better.
edit: *some people are others are not