Thanks all for helping me think through these things.
Very good points. It’ll definitely be up to the owner of that domain to decide how to police their subdomains (or not).
Ah yes, instead of “possible” I meant more like “easy for the average cryptojoe to do”
Yes, it’s not really any different, which I think is kind of the issue…
Why ENS? From the website:
“No more sandboxed usernames.” Well… unless you’re using Coinbase NFT, in which case they may not just let you use your own ENS name, they may only allow you to use their sandboxed usernames (*.coinbase.eth subdomains). This is conjecture on my part, I don’t actually know what Coinbase plans to do.
In web2 we’ve built up so many popular namespaces like Twitter, Instagram, and obviously .com and the rest. Sandboxed social media platforms in particular are rife with impersonation scams because it’s so easy (and free) to do.
I had kinda hoped ENS would be the antidote to that. So anyone can go and register a .eth name, and then bring that name to Twitter/Instagram/etc, sign a message, and it displays your .eth name with a special logo/banner that signals to everyone else that you are the legit owner of that name. Assuming that normalization issues are addressed, then you could almost completely eliminate that problem. On Nftychat I don’t have to worry when I see a username, because I know it only allows the ENS primary name to be displayed (at least right now). If I’m talking to @slobo.eth then I know it’s the real account immediately.
Instead what we may end up getting is each individual platform still using their own sandboxed username system, just with ENS subdomains instead. Pretend I’m grandma and explain to me, what is the advantage of this over the current sandboxed username system of Coinbase Wallet or Twitter?