Summary
Imagine if Metamask, Uniswap, Farcaster, OpenSea, WalletConnect, Etherscan, etc. all became “Frontend Registrars” that directly onboard their users into ENS. We help ENS grow by integrating ENS onboarding into web3 wallets, apps, and games where millions of people already are. To advance these goals we’re building NameKit, NameGuard, and advancing a (proposed) ENS Referral Program.
We have a 15 person team that is working day and night to help ENS grow. The opportunity to become an ENS Service Provider means the world to us. Thank you for your heartfelt support. 
Provider
NameHash Labs (namehashlabs.org)
namehashlabs.eth
Point of contact
What we’re building for ENS
We help ENS grow by integrating ENS onboarding into web3 wallets, apps, and games where millions of people already are. To advance these goals we’re building NameKit, NameGuard, and advancing a (proposed) ENS Referral Program.
The problem and opportunity
ENS has achieved a special milestone in its growth: the majority of ENS names are now issued through “Frontend Registrar” apps other than app.ens.domains. For example, Coinbase Wallet alone has issued more than 4 million ENS names. Rainbow Wallet is another example.
The future of ENS growth will predominantly be driven by this trend. Our biggest growth opportunity is persuading more “Frontend Registrar” apps to issue ENS names directly to their audiences. Persuading apps that already have millions of users is especially valuable.
We have a problem though. The current incentives for an app to become a “Frontend Registrar” for ENS aren’t so good.
Let’s take a technology perspective. Where does NameKit fit in?
There’s a lot of great focus by other teams in the ENS ecosystem at the smart contract layer. For example, with name issuance strategies on L2 or offchain. Some helpful libraries also exist. These are awesome !
However, from the perspective of an app that’s considering becoming an ENS “Frontend Registrar”, there’s still a big hole in the middle of their ENS Tech Stack. “ENS Frontend Registrars” have to build all of the “Advanced ENS User Journeys’’ mostly from scratch themselves.
Some might ask if it is truly a lot of work to build these “Advanced ENS User Journeys”? Well let’s consider the official ENS Manager app. This is how big? Approximately 100,000 lines of code? All written by the most experienced ENS dev team (ENS Labs) over the course of years ! Should each “Frontend Registrar” build and maintain their own version of all this logic?
The analogy above of course isn’t perfect, but the point is that if an app wants to become a “Frontend Registrar” with a great UX that handles all the edge cases and continuously keeps up with all the innovation in the ENS ecosystem there’s a lot of work to do it well!
NameKit will include:
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Open source libraries that anyone can run in their own app / infrastructure.
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Public hosted cloud services (for those who don’t want to run their own infrastructure).
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Client SDKs.
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UI Kits.
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Figma Design Templates.
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Rich documentation.
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Ability to integrate with ENS Name Issuance strategies built by other teams on L1, L2, or Offchain.
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… and more!
“Frontend Registrar” UX - Challenges & Opportunities
When the majority of ENS names are being registered on 3rd party apps it’s important that we make it easy for these 3rd parties to do an amazing job with all these UX details.
Key products under development
| Product | Summary | Current Dev Status |
|---|---|---|
| NameKit | Enable every app to easily build amazing ENS onboarding and profile management. | v0.1 alpha |
| NameGuard | Guard your users from heartbreak and encourage best practice usage of ENS. | v0.8 beta |
| ENS Referral Program (proposed) | Provide financial incentive to businesses, builders, and storytellers to invest their efforts into the growth of ENS. | Preliminary temp check |
We’ve put a big effort into these products already, but there’s still a big journey ahead. It will take a lot of resources to get there.
With your support for NameHash Labs to become an official ENS Service Provider we will bring these innovations to life and make big impacts to help ENS grow !
Why vote for us?
Why vote for NameHash Labs?
Here’s 3 key reasons why:
1. Our Principles
Let’s work together to achieve the best results for ENS !
2. Our Mission & Direction
“Help ENS Grow” is the mission that fills our minds each day.
To this end, we do not define ourselves in terms of advancing a specific technical feature. We aren’t interested in building technologies that might be fun as an engineer, but have little market impact. We are focused on working backwards from the goal of “Help ENS Grow” and then doing our best to build the technologies we believe will best advance that.
Today, we believe the best opportunity to “Help ENS Grow” is achieved through NameKit and the ENS Referral Program proposal that we are advancing.
3. Our Team & Long-Term Commitment to ENS
Our team has been working for more than 2 years to build big things for ENS !
| Product | Summary |
|---|---|
| NameKit | Enable every app to easily build amazing ENS onboarding and profile management. |
| NameGuard | Guard your users from heartbreak and encourage best practice usage of ENS. |
| ENS Referral Program (proposed) | Provide financial incentive to businesses, builders, and storytellers to invest their efforts into the growth of ENS. |
| ENS Normalize Python & contributions to the ENSIP-15 standard | Python implementation of the ENS name normalization standard. |
| ENS Label Inspector | A detailed X-ray into the attributes of labels in ENS names. |
| ENS Font Data | Metadata for graphemes that may appear in ENS names. |
| NameKit Contracts | Contracts that help “Registrar Frontends” earn additional revenue for helping ENS grow. |
| NameGuard Client SDK | TypeScript client SDK for making API calls to NameGuard. |
| NameGuard React UI Kit | React components for creating great UX with NameGuard data. |
| NameGuard Figma UI Kit | Customize NameKit user experiences to match your unique app. |
| ENS Name Parser | Utilities for parsing ENS names from user input. |
| NameGuard Cloud Deployment Automations | Easily deploy your own instance of NameGuard into the cloud. |
About us
NameHash Labs is represented by a team of 15 working day and night to help ENS grow.
We’re proud of our talented team and will be announcing multiple opportunities to come meet them and ask any questions in scheduled Google Meet calls prior to the commencement of Service Provider voting.
Backgrounds in our team range from experienced technology entrepreneurs to Computer Science PhDs who are at the cutting edge of their fields.
To date, all expenses to support this 15 person team have come at the personal expense of our two founders. It adds up to a lot. All we have built has always been 100% ENS exclusive. We believe these personal investments represent an unrivaled proof of commitment to ENS.
Everyone on our team appreciates support from the ENS community for NameHash Labs to become an ENS Service Provider. This funding will be critical to support the salaries of our team and their ongoing work to help ENS grow.
We look forward to a long future as dedicated members of the ENS community.
Further information
Our team:
Our key projects:
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ENS Referral Program (proposed)
Conflict of interest statement
We have no conflicts of interest.
10k endorsement
Budget requested
$600,000 / year
With such a large team, this amount falls short of covering all our costs, but we are betting big on ENS. How big? Our founders have been completely unpaid for all of their work on ENS over the last 2 years. Additionally, the salaries for all work produced by our team to date has been funded by our founders.
The opportunity to become an ENS Service Provider means the world to us. Thank you for your heartfelt support.