The Ethereum Name Service has switched on ENSv2. The DAO’s Activate ENSv2 proposal executed at 06:01 UTC on Tuesday in one transaction, freezing new .eth registrations on the old registrar. By 13:17 UTC, ENS Labs had finished the follow-up steps, on-chain records listed by ENSWhois show.

The rundown

  • What changed: The registrar is the contract that hands out and renews .eth names. The v1 one now only renews, through a contract called ETHRenewerV1, and new names are sold through the v2 ETHRegistrar, which could register names from 08:07 UTC. Labs ran a final sync of 2,742 names, gave up its admin roles to the DAO by 08:14 UTC, and the switch to v2 resolution (the lookup that turns a name into an address) went through at 13:17 UTC, by our check of block timestamps.
  • Why it matters: ENS is the address book for much of Ethereum, so this is a change to plumbing that wallets and apps read every day. Moving to the new registry is optional for owners, with no deadline, but it cannot be undone. Every live v1 name was reserved on v2 for its current owner, with its expiry set 62 days past the v1 date, according to the proposal.
  • Where it breaks: Not every name made the trip cleanly. ENSWhois counts 43,982 names, 4.9% of the total, whose v2 reservation has lapsed because they sit in the last 28 days of their grace period, the window after expiry when only the old owner can renew. Those names don’t resolve through ENSv2. On the forum, one user asked why names on an older public resolver weren’t on the approved list for automatic moves. The public Universal Resolver now sits behind a proxy managed by ENS’s security council, which is a new key to trust. A migration is a transaction the owner signs, so the usual rules on what a private key is apply.
  • By the numbers: 898,423 live v1 names. 854,183 (95.1%) reserved and in sync on v2. 199 already migrated and 31 brand-new v2 registrations, per ENSWhois’s readiness page in the early afternoon. The vote passed with 1.69 million ENS from 62 addresses and one wallet against, casting 24.94 ENS, The Merkle reported, citing Tally.

The code had three independent audits, from Certora in May and Nethermind in June and October, according to a post on the proposal thread. Elsewhere on Ethereum, core developers patched a Glamsterdam deposit flaw on Monday, and on 22 Oct we covered EIP-8453’s faster-finality proposal.

Governance thread: Executable: Activate ENSv2 (ENS DAO forum)

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.