ENS Labs Quarterly Report - Q1 2025
Abstract
In October 2024, ENS Labs achieved quorum in favor of ENSv2 funding, marking a significant milestone in the evolution and growth of the ENS protocol. The DAO’s approval increased ENS Labs’ annual budget to $9.7M USDC, with an additional one-time grant allocated to ENSv2 security audits.
As promised, quarterly transparency reports will be provided in this forum to provide financial and technical progress updates on the development of ENSv2 and ENS’ L2 Namechain.
2025: A New Chapter for ENS
ENS Labs closed 2024 with a sprint to host frENSday, where we officially announced Namechain and laid out the vision for ENSv2 at large. We met so many ENS community members, integrators and champions, which was an incredibly energizing and inspiring way to close out the year.
2025 will be the year of growth and new direction for ENS, a new chapter with a renewed focus on user experience and technological innovation.
Leadership
ENSv2 is an extension of what the team has been building towards for the past 8 years. As with any new chapter, change is inevitable as a company scales. To that end, we have two exciting updates on the Leadership team:
- Nick Johnson, founder and lead developer of the ENS Protocol, will step into the position of CEO of ENS Labs. Nick is the original founder of ENS Labs and the inventor of the ENS Protocol. After 8 years, he remains dedicated to the growth of ENS and true to the core values of decentralization and permissionless innovation. In this role, Nick will continue to lead the Protocol Engineering team as well as set strategic vision and direction for ENS Labs for years to come.
- Jeff Lau, one of ENS Labs’ first employees and long-time protocol engineer will step up as CTO. Jeff has spent the past 8 years at ENS Labs on the Engineering side; initially as a front-end engineer before moving over to protocol development. In this new seat, Jeff will oversee Engineering and Product — leading these teams as we scale, driving technical execution of ENSv2, and ensuring the protocol continues upholding the highest standards of security, performance, and decentralization.
Both of these role changes will level up ENS Labs massively as we head into an incredibly important development year for the ENS Protocol and Namechain.
Team
As we closed Q1, we added 12 headcount (full time employees & contractors) to the team, bringing our current headcount to 28. Our new hires span across 8 team members on Engineering and Product, with 4 on our Growth and Operations teams.
We’re thrilled to announce the establishment of the Growth team, which includes Partnerships, Marketing, and Ecosystem. This function will enable strategic scale by focusing on integrations and partnerships that will surface all of the powerful capabilities of ENS to users and developers– ultimately helping to drive adoption, expand utility, and cement ENS as foundational infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond.
If you are excited about ENS and the work that we are doing here at Labs, please consider joining us!
Growth, Ecosystem & Community
Q1 of 2025 was a period of strategic calibration and expansion for the Growth team. ENS Labs organized the Ethereum Cambridge Workshop (more on this under Protocol updates), collaborated with leading projects at ETH Denver, and formed potential integration relationships with registries and registrars at ICANN 82.
With our new Head of Growth, the Growth team revamped its marketing processes to keep educational and partnership content engaging, useful for users, and to ensure that ENS is part of the important Ethereum ecosystem narratives in 2025 ahead of Namechain launch.
Growth Indicators
The first quarter of 2025 demonstrated positive growth across our key metrics. Both .eth registrations and renewals on mainnet Ethereum increased compared to Q4 2024, while subname growth continued to play a major role in establishing ENS names as the standard naming protocol.
(Source: https://dune.com/ethereumnameservice/ens)
Subnames have also continued to be a huge driver in the proliferation of ENS names across the industry. As we work to further standardize subname systems in the ENS protocol and L2 primary names (more on this next quarter), we hope to bring more names onchain across different L2 ecosystems.
ETH Denver 2025
The entire Growth and DevRel teams were present at ETH Denver to answer questions about Namechain, ENS subnames, how multichain ENS works, and discuss other ENS use cases. We met with dozens of companies interested in issuing their own subnames or integrating ENS and are working to refine those partnerships– hopefully these will be announced throughout the course of this year. At EthDenver, we also provided ENS branded swag for .eth owners, special swag for active users that set profile records, and ENS-branded Burner wallets with brnr.eth subnames using Namestone.
On Feb 28th at Beacon RiNO, ENS co-hosted “Linea After Dark”, in collaboration with Consensys, Trusta Labs, and the ENS DAO Ecosystem WG. 500+ attendees picked up special Linea.eth subname shirts, live-painted by local graffiti artists. We also collaborated with POAP on a scavenger hunt.
ICANN 82 - Seattle
In 2026, ICANN will be accepting new gTLD applications. We are actively working to facilitate DNS + ENS integrations with registries and companies applying for new gTLDs.
To kickstart this, ENS Labs participated at ICANN 82 in Seattle earlier in March. While in attendance, we met with registries, registrars, IP law firms, tech companies, national country-code representatives, GAC country representatives, and ICANN board members - with the goal to proliferate both ENS and Ethereum goals. With more ICANN conventions on the horizon for the remainder of 2025 and into 2026, we plan to continuously stay engaged and deepen our partnerships with potential DNS integration partners.
Community & Social
Our growth strategy was focused on increased community engagement and measured through social media presence.
Social
X (@ensdomains) grew 12.1% in the last 3 months. The biggest drivers of growth are likes (+64%) and profile visits (+46%), which indicate higher engagement and visibility. LinkedIn profile visits increased by 9.2% and followers increased by 11%.
This quarter we’ve superpowered the ENS Blog, spanning across topics like NameChain design decisions to highlighting integrations and product releases. Check it out!
We’re developing a new social media strategy focused on informational ENS content and co-marketing with partners. Recent examples include collaborations with PayPal and content highlighting the manager app’s renewal date feature. In addition to expanding our fintech integrations and subname ecosystem partnerships, we’re aiming to integrate ENS into more traditional web2 companies which will prove to be an important source of onboarding both into ENS and into web3 at large for new users.
Press
ENS was featured in 19 pieces of earned coverage with an estimated 2.15M views. Highlights include:
- Nick Johnson’s commentary on the Pectra upgrade in FXStreet,
- Alex Urbelis’ investigation of .gov updates in Reuters, and
- James Beck’s discussion of ENS’ integration of Para in The Defiant.
In Q2, we look forward to publishing even more educational content across wallets, apps, and other ENS integrators, partnership and product updates. We’d love to hear from the community any additional useful topics.
Legal & Operations
On the operational side, the legal team at ENS Labs has been continuously working closely with the DAO in order to assist on important DAO matters: compliance and legal requirements to issue and grants (including the service provider program and the Public Goods WG grants), and working on updating the bylaws for the ENS Foundation. As Labs continues to incur and pay costs associated with DAO-related legal work out of pocket, there is a possibility that Labs would seek reimbursement from the DAO. We remain prudent on costs associated with out of scope legal work, and will monitor spend as it relates to legal and policy work that is done on behalf of the DAO and the broader ENS ecosystem.
Product & Engineering Updates
In Q1, across product and front-end - We’ve shipped new Spanish translations, manager app dark mode, design improvements to the ens.domains website and animations, a new docs site with improved processes (PR), and a brand new ENS Labs homepage! As mentioned earlier, we also redesigned and shipped a new Blog page where we have been posting a lot of exciting updates.
Additionally, our open-source design system and component library, Thorin, now has a stable release. Alongside cleaning up and clarifying the API, we’ve moved over to using vanilla-extract, making it smaller and easier to slot into any application.
On the integration side, we recently announced a partnership with Para, a wallet and authentication suite designed to make interacting with web3 applications simple and secure. Para’s embedded wallet technology utilizes distributed multi-party computation (MPC) and passkey protocols, enabling users to authenticate into applications using only their email address, phone number, or social media account. The universality of Para’s embedded wallets makes them an ideal partner in our mission to make ENS names available to anyone, regardless of their familiarity with crypto wallets or where they want to use their ENS name. Any apps that support Para will automatically resolve wallet addresses to an ENS name– and for users who do not use browser extension based wallet, Para provides a seamless way to sign in and manage your ENS identity.
We also released the Multi-Delegate Manager, a smart contract for ENS token holders to delegate their voting power across multiple delegates with as little friction as possible. The MDM is built on Ethereum and leverages proxy contracts to hold and delegate voting power on behalf of the token holder. We believe the MDM to be the next unlock in democratizing DAO governance. With more flexibility in delegation, more voices and perspectives can participate in governance. If you have ENS tokens and want to delegate to more ENS holders, or reallocate voting power, please consider doing so at delegate.ens.domains.
Last but not least, the Product team has been heads down doing intense UX research as we start to think about what the next era of the front-end Manager app may look like in the Namechain Era (
). We hope to share more insights on this in the Q2 update.
Protocol + Namechain Updates
Q1 started off with a 3-day workshop in Cambridge alongside leading researchers and developers from Linea, Status, OpenZeppelin, Titan, Spire Labs and the Ethereum Foundation. This workshop was primarily about how to create scalable, decentralized infrastructure for Namechain. At this 3 day offsite, ENS Labs decided that Namechain will aim to launch as a based rollup (scaling Ethereum by processing transactions off-chain while using Ethereum as the sequencer for secure validation).
As we will be working with Linea to launch Namechain, the Linea team is currently assessing the necessary features and timescale to implement based-rollups, and have posted the initial protocol design here. This will be a critical step in validating the scalability and cost-efficiency of a based-rollup. We are also actively following the development and viability of Native-rollups– though the exact viability and timeline of Native roll-ups will ultimately depend on Ethereum Network upgrades.
Gathering the research work we did in Q1 and looking ahead, here is a non-exhaustive feature list that ENS x Linea are working on for Namechain:
- Multiprover: Support for multiple independent provers, which will reduce the chances of a bug causing catastrophic consequences.
- Invalidity Proof: With permissionless sequencing, a sequencer can propose an invalid block– so the ability to prove invalidity becomes critical.
- Shared Blobs Support: Sharing blobs requires modifications to the smart contract and prover, necessitating audits. Implementation may begin without this feature.
- Reorganization Support: Based rollups must support reorganization in the instance that a L1 reorganizes.
- Realtime State Reconstruction: Real-time state reconstruction without proof dependency requires transaction signatures in the DA. This system must manage reorganizations and verify block validity.
- Limitless Prover: This feature simplifies sequencing and invalidity proofs for based rollups while enhancing user experience generally. Implementation is underway with completion expected in April.
- Coordinator/Prover Decentralization: Sequencer decentralization requires coordinator and prover decentralization as well.
- Research: UX Impact: Vanilla based rollups affect user experience, particularly regarding inclusion time, which will exceed L1 block time. This warrants further investigation.
- L1 State Anchoring: A trustless message passing solution from L1 to L2 requires anchoring the L1 state trustlessly. Research is needed to determine the optimal approach based on delay requirements.
- Integration with L1 Sequencer: L1 sequencers supporting the chain must implement infrastructure for tracking, building, and posting blocks. The solution should facilitate component updates, especially when prover incompatibilities arise.
- Type 1 Rollups: Type 1 rollup implementation simplifies interoperability by eliminating need for L2-specific state proof mechanisms. Supporting existing state representation (Patricia Merkle Trees) avoids debates about future L1 state representation while increasing prover costs but simplifying other aspects.
ENS Labs is excited to also join and contribute to FABRIC, an initiative focused on standardizing rollup interoperability across different Layer 2s. This collaboration will play a key role in ensuring seamless scaling and integration for Namechain.
As a sneak peak for Q2: We are very close to finalizing the L2 primary name launch! Currently, ENS Primary names are only officially supported on Ethereum Mainnet. With this launch, primary names will be supported on multiple L2s, which would make it possible for developers and users to have an end-to-end experience with ENS on L2 networks. Stay tuned for the launch on this soon!.
Last but not least, please find below a non-exhaustive list of achievements and code deliverables from the Protocol team in Q1:
Infrastructure & Tooling
- Improved how we deploy ENS on public test networks for better consistency and credential safety.
- Improved code coverage, linting, etc, in our repositories.
- Better standardization of contract naming and structure.
- Started using unruggable-gateways in place of the original ENS gateway implementation.
Core Registry & Resolver Development
- Completed the implementation of numerous ENSv2 core smart contracts, as well as functional improvements to existing ones to match the ENSv2 roadmap requirements.
- Built a library that acts as a factory for verifiable proxy contracts. This means that copies of a common contract such as an ENS resolver can be cheaply deployed for each user on Namechain, while providing upgradeability and the ability to trustlessly verify the current implementation a proxy is using via CCIP-Read.
Financial Reporting
Income
As of Q1 close, we have received $2,391,780.82 USDC from the ENS DAO.
Expenses
Our total expenses for Q1 2025 totalled $1,295,447.75. The top three expense categories were:
- Employee Compensation & Benefits (66.5%) which reflects our exciting +75% (+12) growth in headcount (full-time + contractors) in Q1.
- Professional Services (12.5%) includes our third-party providers supporting our Accounting, Legal & Compliance, and Recruiting & Hiring services.
- Advertising & Marketing (5.6%) covering our PR services and media relations.
Closing
Q1 2025 has set a strong foundation for ENS Labs with significant achievements across all fronts: recruiting top tier talent, technical progress on Namechain development, and successful community engagement at ETH Denver and ICANN 82. Our financial management remains robust, with clear allocation of resources prioritizing talent and development as we build toward ENSv2, alongside strengthening L2 integrations.
This quarterly transparency report marks the beginning of more structured communication with our community. As we move into Q2 with momentum, we hope to continue delivering on our mission driven and high quality work. We deeply appreciate your ongoing support and trust as we work towards ENSv2.
