Applicant Information
Name: Unruggable
Website: unruggable.com
ENS: unruggable.eth
Primary Contacts: Thomas Clowes (clowes.eth), Prem Makeig (premm.eth)
Company Overview:
Unruggable is a research and development firm advancing the verified web through consistent, high-impact contributions to the Ethereum Name Service (ENS).
Unruggable created and maintains Unruggable Gateways, a core component of ENSv2. It enables secure, trustless resolution of data from Namechain and other L2 blockchains.
We are deeply embedded in the ENS ecosystem and actively contribute to all three DAO working groups. Our work consistently focuses on advancing ENS, including efforts to develop secure name resolution on L2s and enable cross-chain identity through next-generation interoperability solutions. Previous contributions include both research initiatives (such as “ENS Chain”) and supporting the development of tooling (EthTools.com).
In 2025 we are expanding our scope to focus energy on education, onboarding, and integrations – supporting developers in building with ENS, and providing on the ground support onboarding companies (and their products).
Requested Amount:
In the first iteration of the Service Provider Program we believe that we delivered value significantly beyond our cost to the DAO. We have been consistent contributors to the ecosystem with tangible output over many years. Our core limitation over the past year has been bandwidth. Increased funding will allow us to expand our team and scale our impact.
Extended Scope
We are seeking $700,000 per year for a two-year term.
With an extended budget, we will expand our team to 3 - 4 members, allowing us to continue the development and support of Unruggable Gateways, pursue research at the frontier of ENS, and dedicate focused resources to education and developer support. This includes helping unlock the global potential of ENS by providing mentorship, producing educational content, and supporting developers - particularly in underrepresented regions - through both partnerships and grassroots efforts.
We will maintain a strong focus on cross-chain ENS identity, including how ENS will operate using new Ethereum interoperability standards, and how to securely resolve ENS records in these environments.
An annual budget of $700k will support a 3 - 4 person technical team (including the founders), cover travel and administrative costs for at least two members to attend ENS and Ethereum ecosystem events, and fund the operational infrastructure needed to execute our roadmap.
Basic Scope
We have also included a $400,000/year basic scope proposal.
With a basic budget, we will continue working on the same core areas described below, including Unruggable Gateways, frontier ENS research, and developer education. However, our output and ability to scale these efforts will be limited compared to what we could achieve with an extended budget.
An annual budget of $400,000 will support the two full-time founders, provide some flexibility to engage part-time contributors as needed, and cover essential travel, administrative support, and operational costs.
Size of Team and Commitment:
We are currently a team of two co-founders, Thomas (clowes.eth) and Prem (premm.eth).
In 2025 we want to strategically hire talent to support our work maintaining Unruggable Gateways and building developer tooling. This will help drive forward our research, education, onboarding, and integration efforts (outlined below). Our $700k/year ask will allow us to do this.
If we received our basic funding amount ($400k) we would be able to continue with 2 full-time founders, but we would not be able to scale our output or operation.
Our Work
We are seeking funding from the ENS DAO to dedicate energy and resources to:
- ENS developer support and education
The Public Goods working group has supported initiatives like Borderless Africa, who do exceptional work with African founders and builders. We believe there is an untapped opportunity to provide on-the-ground support and mentorship to these builders and others across underrepresented regions.
Digital identity solutions like ENS have global relevance, and we want to help unlock their potential in new contexts.
We intend to invest significant effort in attracting new talent, providing relevant education, and supporting developers in building with the ENS protocol. Whether through collaborations with existing initiatives or grassroots efforts of our own, we believe the rate of return for ENS will be substantial.
Accountability
- Establish relationships with at least two high-impact ecosystem initiatives.
- Launch a developer support program, with public-facing documentation of developers and projects supported.
- Release all educational material and workshop content publicly.
- Technical Liaison
Over the past year, we’ve seen firsthand - across working group calls and discussions - that stewards often need targeted technical insight or lightweight tooling to support their work. We previously proposed a concept for a “Technical Liaison to the DAO”, which was well received. As part of our extended budget scope, Unruggable is well-positioned to fill that role, providing ad-hoc technical support to stewards as needed.
We are also keen to support external teams integrating ENS in real-world environments. In particular, we believe large companies prefer to build in-house, and we want to help them get those internal ENS initiatives off the ground. We’re happy for the DAO to refer such enquiries our way.
Accountability
- We will publicly document DAO requests, timelines, and outcomes.
- We will publish details on companies we’ve supported, the nature of our involvement, and the resulting outcomes.
- Unruggable Gateways
We intend to continue to support the ongoing development and maintenance of Unruggable Gateways.
We want to continue to operate our own independent gateways and continue to work with stakeholders across the ecosystem to collaboratively build a best in class open source solution for cross chain data resolution.
Alongside this we want to build and iterate upon tooling that support users in deploying their own solutions that utilise Unruggable Gateways.
Accountability
- Operate production-grade gateways for at least five L2 chains collaborating with ENS.
- Maintain and improve developer tooling for deploying gateways and integrating them into apps.
- Provide public documentation, integration guides, and quickstart code examples.
- Continue to iterate based on user feedback and community needs.
- Crosschain identity and interop
We want to keep on top of happenings in the wider ecosystem with a particular focus on research into interoperability, and its interplay with ENS.
We have specific interest in building PoC solutions for Superchain interop, and integrations with products innovating within the digital identity space (for example, Self).
We also want to contribute to the conversation (and possibly the implementation) surrounding interop adjacent standards like ERC-7785 and ERC-7828.
Accountability
- We will build at least one working proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstrating ENS resolution across L2s in the Superchain ecosystem.
- We will produce at least one PoC integration with an identity-focused protocol (e.g. Self or similar).
- Our contributions to discussions or implementations around interop-related standards, including ERC-7785 and ERC-7828, will be visible across platforms such as Ethereum Magicians and Github.
- As appropriate we will publish summaries of our research.
- Secure resolution
Resolution has many moving parts. We now have a solution (Gateways) that allows for trustless resolution of data from L2 chains but there are other higher level considerations like validating the integrity of resolver records or adding supplementary security validations. For example you may want to verify that a resolver has been audited, or that a resolver record has not been changed recently.
We aim to define and prototype improved security mechanisms for resolver validation, and support implementers in adopting these best practices.
Accountability
- We will produce a report outlining threat models and potential attack vectors in relation to resolver trust and integrity.
- We will explore and prototype at least one mechanism for verifying resolver metadata (e.g., audit status, modification history, or record freshness).
- Where appropriate, our tools and research will be open-sourced and published for community review and iteration.
- Identity for apps and media
Identity can extend beyond individual users to encompass websites, applications, content, and media. As AI-generated content becomes increasingly prevalent online, the need for verifiable sources of information has never been more critical. By leveraging cryptographically verifiable identifiers, we can establish trust in digital data.
In collaboration with Eth.Limo, we have developed a new standard for fully on-chain applications using the DataURL format. This marks the first time a fully on-chain application can be resolved using an ENS name.
Accountability
- We will release at least two example applications demonstrating utilisation of the data URL standard.
Eligibility Confirmation
Company Age & Reputation:
Unruggable was founded in January 2024 as a UK based Limited company.
We have an established reputation across the ecosystem and significant publicly visible output.
Team Experience:
Prem (premm.eth) has been an independent open-source developer and researcher in the ENS ecosystem since 2021.
He has contributed to the development and discussion of key ENS initiatives including NameWrapper and ENSIP-19 (Cross-Chain Reverse Resolution), while also contributing to ENSIP processes and the architecture of the new Universal Resolver.
Thomas (clowes.eth) has been involved with ENS since its inception in 2017 – EthTools.com was originally one of the first independent frontends for the ENS Vickrey auction process.
Thomas has a background in Economics and over 15 years career experience in the domain name industry having previously worked at DomainNameSales.com and Uniregistry.
In 2024, he led the development of Unruggable Gateways.
ENS Token Endorsement Requirement:
Pending…
OFAC Sanctions Compliance:
We, Unruggable, 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.
Multi Year Stream Eligibility:
- We are a 2024 Service Provider. The selection vote can be found here.
- Our 2024 Service Provider application can be found here.
- Our 2024 accomplishments can be found here.
- For more details on Unruggable Gateways, see our docs and repo and onboarding tool.
Open Source Commitment
Unruggable is committed to making high impact open source (MIT license) contributions to ENS.
Our core product, Unruggable Gateways is fully open source and hosted on Github. We actively welcome contributions (see our Contribution Guidelines) and are proponents of collaborative development to minimise duplication of effort.
Past Achievements & Additional Information
In 2024 our work focused on the development of Unruggable Gateways, a core component of ENSv2. We also focused on ENS protocol research focused on scaling ENS and expanding the functional capabilities of ENS names.
Some of our accomplishments include:
- We built Unruggable Gateways (Github / Documentation) – the middleware that will power trustless resolution of data from L2 blockchains for ENSv2.
- We launched our gateway network with support for Arbitrum, Base, Linea, Optimism, and Scroll.
- We were awarded a grant from the Optimism Collective to support the development of ENS on OP Stack chains.
- We built a user interface for deploying a working subname solution using Unruggable Gateways in 5 minutes.
- We are actively and consistently engaged across all working groups, regularly contributing to discussions across Metagovernance, Ecosystem, and Public Goods.
- We built CCIP-Reader, that is being iterated on for usage within ENSv2.
- We partnered with Eth.limo, to demonstrate and develop dataURL contentHash records.
- We researched and produced a presentation for ENS Labs at EthGlobal London, exploring potential “ENS Chain” solutions, including optimistic and ZK-based chains.
- We conducted follow-up research on ZKVMs to leverage validity proofs, reducing finalization times for pre-existing solutions such as OP Stack chains.
- We are active and consistent participants in DAO governance.
- We are active and consistent contributors to the ENS discussion forums – clowes.eth and premm.eth.
- We are regular attendees across the Ethereum conference scene and proactively engage with developers to onboard them to the ENS ecosystem. For example we supported developers at EthGlobal San Francisco to build on Unruggable Gateways.
- Presented our work on Gateways at the ENS Unconference at EthCC in Brussels.
- Presented our work on Unruggable Gateways at Devcon Bangkok.
- Presented our work on the ‘Verified Web’ at EthZurich.
- We supported other ENS Service Providers (e.g. NameStone) in launching subname projects on L2s and contributed to the development of Durin, a developer kit for creating L2 name services using ENS.
- We have spearheaded making ENSIPs an independent process with independent editors. Prem is a founding editor alongside Nick Johnson and Steve Katzman.
- We have engaged in active research into potential improvements to (and extensions of) the protocol. For example:
- Direct contributions to ENSIP-19 including proposing a default fallback enabling EOAs to set a primary name on every chain in one transaction.
- Using aliases for ENS name resolution, allowing users to manage records for all their ENS names in a single profile.
- Utilizing Hashed Bytes Storage in conjunction with our gateway solution for trustlessly reading large data packets stored on chain.
- Utilizing Hooks, a new resolution method enabling secure onchain data resolution, including zk proofs, solving long-standing challenges in ENS resolution.
- We have built ENS specific tooling on EthTools.com to make ENS more accessible and to improve the development experience. For example:
- We have adapted more generic EthTools.com tooling to allow for usage in verification of call data in relation to the ENS Governance process. For example: see here in relation to this proposal.
- We have built tooling for the effective management of Gateway release process. For example, Rollup Updates.
Video Introduction
Application Video (< 5 mins)
Bonus
Conflict of Interest Statement
Unruggable is currently an ENS Service Provider.
There are no conflicts of interest that we are aware of.