0. Introduction
0.1. Proposal Summary
NameHash Labs is an existing ENS Service Provider with a team of 14. We are seeking a $1.1M budget from the ENS DAO to deliver key infrastructure for the ENS ecosystem.
This includes 8 substantial ENS infrastructure engineering projects, to include ENSNode, ENSAdmin, NameGraph, and NameAI to address urgent ENS infrastructure needs:
1. Close critical ENS infrastructure gaps:
Indexed ENS data is vital for the upcoming launch of ENSv2 and Namechain. Existing ENS indexed data providers (the ENS Subgraph) are fundamentally unsuitable for ENSv2 and a replacement is critically required for many of ENS’s most important apps, including the official ENS Manager App among many others.
2. Strengthen the decentralization and “unstoppability” of ENS:
Our infrastructure under development removes a strict dependency on many centralized offchain gateway servers whose downtime would otherwise shut down impacted multichain ENS names that are key to the future of ENSv2 and Namechain, such as subnames of base.eth, linea.eth, or tokenized DNS names such as .box names or 3DNS names.
3. Deliver game-changing ENS protocol innovations:
We are engineering radically accelerated resolution of most ENS queries. ENSNode’s architecture unlocks near-instant bulk resolution of live ENS records, including name resolution configurations that span across multiple chains. This can be contrasted with the status quo strategy that requires time-consuming routing through the multi-step CCIP-read handshake process and offchain gateway servers that are potentially centralized or potentially implement request tracking. For most ENS names, enjoy ~20 times faster ENS resolutions of live (not stale) ENS records with more privacy and no centralized dependencies.
4. Support a restabilization of declining ENS DAO revenues:
We are executing a number of infrastructure-level strategies to help boost and restabilize ENS DAO revenues to ensure the indefinite continuation of ENS protocol development.
With your approval of our $1.3M total “Extended Scope” budget (please vote us to be your #1 ranked proposal 
), ENS will additionally gain solutions for other urgent needs, including:
5. Guarantee the creation of an ENS Referral Program to promote the launch of ENSv2 and Namechain with a minimum budget of $50k.
The guarantee is simple, if our “Extended Scope” budget is approved and if the ENS DAO still has not launched a different ENS Referral Program prior to the launch of ENSv2, then upon the launch of ENSv2, we will deploy our own permissionless ENSv2 Referral Program contracts. We will fund these contracts ourselves with $50k to provide revenue sharing rewards for registrar apps that refer a minimum number of their users to make .eth registrations and renewals.
We will also invest in the creation and distribution of marketing materials, community outreach, and related “microsites” for the ENS Referral Program.
6. Boost ENS revenue stabilization and the long-term health of the ENS DAO through a new (and much needed!) infrastructure project - ENS TokenScope:
We will deliver infrastructure for ENS registrar apps to easily identify that a name might be taken, but could still be purchased for a fair price and to help facilitate that aftermarket transaction. This action further supports ENS DAO revenues as secondary market transactions ultimately encourages more .eth registrations and renewals.
Relatedly, we will also deliver ENS infrastructure to trace the relationship from an ENS name (including tokenized DNS names) to the specific NFT that tokenizes the ownership of the name.
ENS TokenScope closes a key vector of adoption risks for ENS vs. Namechain’s highly VC funded competitors, and supports the attraction of new DNS TLDs from the upcoming ICANN auctions to tokenize their names on Namechain.
Our team of 14 includes highly accomplished senior engineers and is delivering big for ENS.
Now we need your help.
We are 100% bootstrapped and have never raised any money from investors. The ENS Service Provider Program is crucial for us to continue supporting our team and maintaining our commitment to ENS.
We really appreciate your consideration for funding and thank you so much for your support.
0.2. ENS Key Infrastructure Needs
Our team is building key solutions for ENS’s 3 key areas of need:
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Critical infrastructure gaps for ENSv2;
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DAO financial stability; and
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Developer enablement for more big ENS integrations.
0.2.1. Critical Infrastructure Gaps for ENSv2
First, and most importantly, ENSv2 has a critical unsolved infrastructure gap: indexed data.
The ENS Subgraph has been critical infrastructure for ENSv1, serving as the source of indexed ENS data. However, the Subgraph is fundamentally unsuitable for ENSv2.
How critical is the need for indexed ENS data? There’s over 700 million / requests for it a year, and growing! And this is only for mainnet!
Critical ENS Apps currently rely on this service, including:
Core ENS Developer Tooling like ENSjs.
Wallets like Rainbow.
Marketplaces like Vision.
Chain explorers like Blockscout.
Social apps like the Ethereum Follow Protocol.
… and many other key platforms that form the ENS ecosystem, including:
As you can see, indexed data is key to the ENS protocol.
However, even for ENSv1, a strong argument can be made that the Subgraph is already unsuitable. Data for 90% of ENS names is already missing in the Subgraph!
The Subgraph has many big problems. Chief among those: the Subgraph is single-chain only.
Let’s make some practical examples. Because the Subgraph is single-chain only, this means for over 90% of ENS names it’s not currently possible to answer fundamental questions like:
What are all the names owned by this address?
Or, what are all the social records / chain addresses set on this name?
This data is currently available only for mainnet, which is why you may not have noticed the problem yet.
But ENS is multichain, and ENS is offchain, too! 90% of ENS names are already issued off of mainnet, this includes base.eth subnames on Base, linea.eth subnames on Linea, and offchain subnames including uni.eth, cb.id, and many more.
And crucially, what happens with ENSv2? For ENSv1 the Subgraph at least is working for direct subnames of .eth on mainnet.
However, when ENSv2 launches, direct subnames of .eth are transitioning off of mainnet to Namechain.
The limitations of the Subgraph are critical.
Key limitations include being single-chain only. ENS is already 90% multichain, the key exception has been .eth on mainnet. However with ENSv2, even .eth is becoming multichain!
We need to ensure ENSv2 launches with a strong data indexing solution!
0.2.2. DAO Financial Stability
ENS is blessed to have a meaningful financial runway saved in reserves. However, we should take note:
ENS Revenues are trending downward.
The ENS DAO daily revenues graph from Steakhouse show a concerning trend that would be unwise to dismiss.
DAO Revenues originate from .eth registrations and renewals.The historical active .eth graph from Makoto shows this critical metric for ENS dropping over time.
Growing subnames in general is good for ENS, but only direct subnames of .eth produce revenue for the ENS DAO.
We need .eth registrations and renewals to be healthy and growing (or at least stable)!
0.2.3. Developer Enablement for ENS Integrations
ENS provides powerful capabilities, but some developers experience challenges with integrations.
A number of ENS integrations fail to support all ENS names, use cases, or best practices.
A number of operations in the ENS protocol require special care to implement correctly. A lot of documentation may already exist, but that doesn’t mean developers are correctly reading the docs in full. For important use cases it can be a lot of work to correctly understand, implement, and test. This ultimately is resulting in fewer ENS integrations, or flawed ENS integrations that lead to bad ENS user experiences.
We need to enable developers to more easily build optimal ENS integrations.
0.3. Strategy Overview
The following table outlines the relationship between ENS’s 3 key needs, our solutions, and funding of the basic vs extended proposal scope:
0.4. Our ENS Infrastructure Solutions
To service ENS’s 3 key needs, our team is building 8 key ENS infrastructure projects:
These eight ENS infrastructure projects work together to address the critical needs of ENSv2, enhance DAO financial stability through increased registrations and renewals, and support developers to build more big ENS integrations.
0.4.1. ENSNode
- Product Webpage
- Infrastructure Summary
- ENSNode is the new multichain ENS indexer for ENS and ENSv2.
- ENSNode builds on Ponder. Ponder’s powerful open source framework enables many of the key ENS indexing innovations in ENSNode.
- Strategic Goals
- Fill critical ENS infrastructure gaps for ENSv2.
- ENS developer enablement.
- Selected Key Benefits
- Close critical ENS infrastructure gaps:
- Indexed ENS data is vital for the upcoming launch of ENSv2 and Namechain. Existing ENS indexed data providers (the ENS Subgraph) are fundamentally unsuitable for ENSv2 and a replacement is critically required for many of ENS’s most important apps, including the official ENS Manager App among many others.
- Strengthen the decentralization and “unstoppability” of ENS:
- Our infrastructure under development removes a strict dependency on many centralized offchain gateway servers whose downtime would otherwise shut down impacted multichain ENS names that are key to the future of ENSv2 and Namechain, such as subnames of base.eth, linea.eth, or tokenized DNS names such as .box names or 3DNS names.
- Deliver game-changing ENS protocol innovations:
- We are engineering radically accelerated resolution of most ENS queries. ENSNode’s architecture unlocks near-instant bulk resolution of live ENS records, including name resolution configurations that span across multiple chains. This can be contrasted with the status quo strategy that requires time-consuming routing through the multi-step CCIP-read handshake process and offchain gateway servers that are potentially centralized or potentially implement request tracking. For most ENS names enjoy ~20 times faster ENS resolutions of live (not stale) ENS records with more privacy and no centralized dependencies.
- Close critical ENS infrastructure gaps:
- Key Metrics / User Traction / Successful Deployments and Integrations
- Indexes 100% of base.eth subnames on Base.
- Indexes 100% of linea.eth subnames on Linea.
- ENSNode is verified to pass 100% backwards compatibility with the ENS Subgraph to streamline adoption.
- 10x faster than the ENS Subgraph.
- 35x more efficient than the ENS Subgraph.
- Passes 100% of ens-test-env tests.
- ENS Labs is currently reviewing switching the ens-test-env from using the ENS Subgraph to using ENSNode.
- Additional Links
0.4.2. ENSRainbow
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Product Webpage
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Infrastructure Summary
- Heal millions of unknown ENS names with this ENSNode sidecar service.
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Strategic Goals
- Fill critical ENS infrastructure gaps for ENSv2.
- ENS developer enablement.
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Selected Key Benefits
- Reduce ENS’s UX / DX complexity:
- The ENS community has better things to do than learn about technical complexities like unknown names or encoded labelhashes.
- Reduce ENS’s UX / DX complexity:
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Key Metrics / User Traction / Successful Deployments and Integrations
- Additional Links
0.4.3. ENSAdmin
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Product Webpage
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Infrastructure Summary
- Explore the ENS Protocol like never before.
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Strategic Goals
- ENS developer enablement.
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Selected Key Benefits
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Interactively learn and debug how ENS Registries, Registrars, Resolvers, Gateways, and Clients interact.
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Monitor multichain indexing status of a connected ENSNode instance
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Connect to any ENSNode instance
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Interactively preview ENSNode APIs
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Additional Links
0.4.4. ENSv2 Referral Programs
- Product Webpage
- Infrastructure Summary
- Smart contracts for implementing an ENS Referral Program on ENSv2.
- Strategic Goals
- DAO financial stability.
- ENS developer enablement.
- Selected Key Benefits
- Incentivize platforms with large existing audiences to integrate and promote .eth registrations and renewals.
- Permissionless. Not only to participate as a referrer, but also to create and fund.
- Enables any number of ENSv2 Referral Programs to be created. Each can define their own rules for what qualifies for a reward, how rewards are scored, how they are withdrawn, etc…
- Mitigates previously voiced concerns of theoretical referral program uncertainties through support for optional finite-lifespan referral program strategies that constrain any “blast radius” of unintended side effects. Let’s try, learn, and iterate with improvements!
- Compatible with the ENSv2 contracts ENS Labs has open sourced.
- Additional Links
0.4.5. NameGraph
- Product Webpage
- Infrastructure Summary
- NameGraph helps name collectors find collectable names they love.
- Name discovery algorithms build on NameAI and NameGuard.
- Strategic Goals
- DAO financial stability.
- ENS developer enablement.
- Selected Key Benefits
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The most powerful discovery engine for collectable names ever created: Processes inputs through multiple interpretations and tokenizations
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World’s largest knowledge graph of names: 400,000+ curated collections with 21+ million unique names
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Social, cultural, addictive, and fun! The initial release of NameGraph doesn’t include support to add or customize your own collections yet. But capabilities for this are in the roadmap, including some special strategies to ensure collections are high quality and don’t become polluted with abuse or low quality content. So over time the collections will fill out and become even stronger!
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Fast and easy integration.
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Note: The following screenshots are from the NameGraph “developer demo” app. This app is intended to inspire developers with features they can build into their own apps using NameGraph. The “developer demo” app is not intended for direct consumer use (although it’s pretty fun)!
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Powerful search across more than 400,000 name collections
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View details of a collection in the NameGraph
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View details of a name in the NameGraph
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Recursively navigate curiously related ideas in the NameGraph
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Supports any parent name
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Explore endless fun!
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- Key Metrics / User Traction / Successful Deployments and Integrations
- Public launch on 20 March 2025
- Vision already launched an initial integration. Additional integrations under development.
- Annualized user request volume: 3,000,000 requests / year (only 10 days since launch!)
- Additional Links
- NameGraph collection building data pipeline
- NameGraph backend service
- We host an instance of NameGraph that’s freely available for you or anyone in the community to make use of at api.namegraph.dev.
- API Docs
- NameGraph TypeScript SDK
- NameGraph Developer Demo App
0.4.6. NameAI
- Product Webpage
- Infrastructure Summary
- Building on NameGuard, NameAI enables sophisticated multi-dimensional scoring for ENS names, helping ENS marketplace apps automatically sort the most attractive names to the top. Through advanced tokenization and analysis techniques, NameAI evaluates all possible ENS names across various attributes to effectively approximate their overall attractiveness, making it easier for name collectors to find and collect more names they love.
- Strategic Goals
- DAO Financial Stability
- Developer Enablement
- Selected Key Benefits
- Multi-dimensional Name Scoring: Customize name scoring strategies that are optimized for your community.
- Advanced Tokenization: Probabilistic parsing of name components into recognized words. Filter names by word-count.
- Fast and easy integration: even small teams can now offer sophisticated name discovery features, fostering innovation throughout the ecosystem.
- Key Metrics / User Traction / Successful Deployments and Integrations
- Public launch on February 20, 2025
- Vision already launched an initial integration (branded as VisionScore). Additional integrations under development.
- Over 40,000,000 requests since launch!
- Additional Links
0.4.7. NameGuard
- Product Webpage
- Infrastructure Summary
- NameGuard provides comprehensive security analysis for ENS names, identifying and preventing malicious use through advanced detection systems. It creates a safer environment for ENS users by detecting potential security risks, impersonation attempts, and usability issues in ENS names, addressing the “sharp edges” that could lead to unexpected or harmful consequences. Currently being rearchitected to leverage ENSNode services, NameGuard will deliver improved analysis capabilities while transitioning core logic to TypeScript for broader application integration.
- Strategic Goals
- Developer Enablement
- Selected Key Benefits
- Multi-level Protection: Comprehensive security checks across various dimensions
- Impersonation Detection: Identifies names attempting to mimic legitimate ENS names
- Confusable Character Analysis: Detects visually similar characters that could be used to deceive
- Internationalization Checks: Assesses accessibility across language barriers
- Unified Rating System: Clear Pass/Warn/Fail classifications for security issues
- Key Metrics / User Traction / Successful Deployments and Integrations
- Foundation for NameAI, which has already received 40,000,000 requests since launch
- Additional Links
0.4.8. NameKit
- Product Webpage
- Infrastructure Summary
- NameKit is a developer toolkit that aims to make ENS onboarding fun and easy.
- Major ENSv2 rearchitecture in progress. NameKit will build for ENSv2 using ENSNode.
- The vision is to provide developers with tools to easily integrate rich ENS user journeys into wallets, apps, and games. Currently focused on core ENS functionality, NameKit offers a suite of packages including React components, TypeScript utilities, and contract templates that simplify ENS integration.
- Strategic Goals
- DAO Financial Stability
- Developer Enablement
- Additional Links
1. Applicant Information
1.1. Company Name
NameHash Labs
1.2. Websites
Our company
Our 8 key ENS infrastructure products
1.3. Company ENS Name
1.4. Primary Contacts
lightwalker.eth and caldonia.eth.
1.5. Company Overview
Founded in 2022, NameHash Labs is dedicated to developing open source infrastructure to support the global adoption of ENS.
We are honored to be an existing ENS Service Provider. Thank you for your trust and for the opportunity.
Our team’s expertise has matured a lot this past year. We’re now in discussions with ENS Labs for taking the lead on some of the key ENS infrastructure responsibilities for ENSv2.
As we continue to mature, with the support of the DAO and ENS Labs, we aim towards one day qualifying to “graduate” from the ENS Service Provider program. As the ENS ecosystem matures, our evolution demonstrates the success of the ENS Service Provider Program’s ability to foster organizations capable of maintaining and advancing critical components of the protocol alongside ENS Labs.
1.6. Requested Budget
NameHash Labs is applying for a 2-year funding stream, in addition to the 1-year stream option. Please see section 4 (Scope of Work & Budget) below for details.
1.7. Team
Our team of 14 passionate “ENS wizards” includes:
- Seasoned founders, with more than 20 years experience building innovative technology organizations.
- Former OpenZeppelin maintainers, co-authors of ERC-1271, and auditors of ERCs such as ERC-721 and ERC-1155 (yes, those massively influential NFT standards!).
- Experts in AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) who have won numerous international awards. Their expertise helps drive forward key ENS infrastructure such as NameGraph, NameAI, and NameGuard that help ENS grow.
- Software engineers with extensive background in smart contracts, blockchain indexing, and tokenization protocol standards.
- Developer relations (DevRel) engineers with broad experience growing developer ecosystems.
- UX/UI designers with over a decade’s experience crafting beautiful products with strong usability.
- … and many more talented engineers with years of experience and dedication building for ENS!
Additional details on our team can be found near the bottom of our homepage.
2. Eligibility Confirmation
2.1. Company Age
NameHash Labs was established in 2022.
See section 1.5 (Company Overview) above for more information about our company.
2.2. Team Experience
NameHash Labs has exclusively focused on building ENS infrastructure and products for more than 3 years. Our general blockchain and software development experience goes far deeper.
See section 1.7 (Team) above for more details on our experience.
2.3. ENS Token Endorsement
Nick Johnson (nick.eth) has confirmed with us that he will be endorsing our proposal.
2.4. OFAC Sanctions Compliance
We, NameHash Labs, confirm that neither our organization nor any of our employees, contractors, or executive leadership is located in, or a resident of, an OFAC-sanctioned country. We further confirm that none of our business resources are derived from or routed through any country or entity that is subject to sanctions imposed by the United States (OFAC) or equivalent regulatory bodies. We pledge to remain compliant with all applicable sanctions laws and will promptly notify the ENS DAO if our status changes.
2.5. Multi-Year Stream Eligibility
NameHash Labs is a Season 1 ENS Service Provider applying for a multi-year stream in Season 2.
See section 0.4 (Our ENS Infrastructure Solutions) above for more details on our Season 1 work.
3. Open Source Commitment
We commit to our work as an ENS Service Provider being open sourced and MIT licensed in our GitHub.
4. Scope of Work & Budget
Please see the next post in this thread for our detailed scope of work & budget. The forum doesn’t support enough characters to fit into a single post.
5. Additional Information
Please refer to section 0.4 (Our ENS Infrastructure Solutions) above for info on our 8 key ENS infrastructure projects, including key metrics, user traction, successful deployments and integrations, links to GitHub repositories, websites, and more.
5.1. Outreach for ENS Growth
Our team has been active on the broader Ethereum conference circuit. We’ve participated in many global events to help represent ENS and advocate for it within the broader ecosystem, including:
- DevCon Bogota
- ETHGlobal NYC
- ETHGlobal London
- DevConnect Istanbul
- DevCon Bangkok (including frENSday)
- ETHDenver (2024 & 2025)
- EthCC
- ETHDubai
- deBasel Miami
- SmartCon Barcelona
- ETHGlobal SF
We look forward to continuing to engage with the community and support the promotion of ENS at more global events over the coming years.
5.2. Testimonials
Our team is honored to have received a number of testimonials within the ENS community, including the following:
6. Video Introduction
Please see the video at the top of this post in section 0.1 (Proposal Summary) above.
7. Conflict of Interest Statement
We have no conflicts of interest.
