Crypto domains for non technical people

In one of the past articles, we talked about the Domain Name System (you can find it here).

Today we talk about a similar system related to the world of blockchains: crypto domains!

If you recall DNS, its main selling point is to match an IP address with a domain, freeing users from remembering IP addresses.

In the blockchain world, we have the same problem (taking Ethereum as example): both wallets and smart-contracts are identified by a unique address which appears as a 42-character string that is not easy to remember, something like:

0xdc24316b9ae028f1497c275eb9192a3ea0f67022        

Having to deal with such addresses is a risk because if we wrong only one character, we could lose money or other valuables.

Crypto domains are a way to match these addresses with more readable and rememberable strings.

So, for example, we could pair "something.eth" with our wallet address, and, from that moment, we will be able to write "something.eth" without worrying about misspelling it!

Being in the blockchain world, another big difference with DNS is that crypto domains are decentralized.

DNS domains are managed by a pool of authorities that respond under the control of ICANN - A non-profit organization that helps coordinate the Domain Name System - and the whole system is based on a series of DNS servers managed by some important companies.

In crypto domains, the pairing between "domain.eth" and the wallet address is registered in the Ethereum blockchain, so the whole system doesn't require a centralized control.

Today there are a bunch of entities that created and are selling crypto domains, such as Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Unstoppable Domains.

This series of articles is dedicated to managers who are not technical but need a quick introduction to technical topics from various subjects to be more aware in their work.

Feel free to propose new topics clicking here!