[TEMP CHECK] ENS Contract Naming Season

[James]

This post is a follow up from my previous post and has been a collaboration with input from ENScribe, @conor @estmcmxci @cap @vegayp @lightwalker.eth @Premm.eth + others.

ENS Contract Naming Season

Outline

This proposal aims to launch ENS Contract Naming Season: a time-boxed program focused on the creation and empowerment of an ENS protocol integration leaderboard with the goal of driving adoption of ENS at a smart contract, protocol and DAO level.

This proposal also outlines a ‘Temporary Contract Naming Working Group’ with the explicit mandate to drive the communication, adoption and onboarding of different protocols and projects to the program over the next ~6 months. This working group will be primarily led by ENScribe with support from FireEyes and any other humans interested.

A budget for this temporary working group is also proposed, to be used for two purposes; USDC to be used by the working group to pay contributors (primarily Enscribe and any other organisation/human that facilitate the process (outreach and coordination with protocols for example). As well as ENS tokens to be used as incentive for existing and new projects to climb the leaderboard, and achieving proposal goals:

• Develop different engagement strategies for ENS contract naming and ENS leaderboard engagement.
  • Creating a social drive for ENS contract naming and the leaderboard.
  • Direct outreach and onboarding to given protocols and DAOs to encourage their participation in ENS contract naming season.
• Experiment with funding retroactive adoption of ENS names for prominent and high impact smart contracts across Ethereum.
• Develop a clear strategy and execution plan that drives more contracts to adopt ENS naming principles, as well as text records pertaining to the given project.
• Establish an approach to $ENS-based incentives that could be redeployed for future initiatives to drive ENS adoption in other areas (beyond contract naming).

This proposal builds on the ENS: Propagating Use Cases, Registrations and Exposure concept and discussion, as well as meetings between Fire Eyes, Enscribe team, and other ENS contributors in an open telegram group.

Motivation

Clear, human-readable contract names improve user safety and UX, as well as being beneficial to wider ENS adoption. Widespread contract naming further establishes ENS as the identity layer for Ethereum users and contracts: wallets and explorers can show clear provenance, users avoid scam addresses, and DAOs standardize their onchain presence. The forum discussion, WG calls and wider discussion have identified this as “low-hanging fruit with outsized impact,” and suitable for a focused pilot funded by ENS DAO.

Targets for this program and an ENS integration leaderboard are:

• User-facing contracts in widely used Dapps including:
  • DeFi (DEX pools, lending markets, bridges)
  • Consumer (social, gaming, community, payments)
• Core protocol contracts (L2, DeFi protocols, DEX pools, lending markets, bridges, etc)
• DAO governance inc. multisigs, executors, treasuries
• ENS enablers: wallets, deployment platforms, infra that builds in contract naming

By creating a leaderboard of projects that have successfully integrated ENS into their contract; naming will be shown on a number of different ‘tabs’ of the leaderboard.

1. Apps that have named a number of the contracts that end users interface with.
2. DAOs that have named a number of their treasury, working groups, fund distribution and DAO contracts.
3. Protocol contracts that have been named to demonstrate versioning and show relationships between contracts.
4. Wallets and infra that have made ENS integrations easy and accessible, CC the existing work by @ lightwalker on ENSawards.

Budget & Timeline

• Budget:
  • Initially a budget of $75k USDC to cover operational and contributor expenses.
  • Up to 10,000 ENS tokens to cover smart contract naming incentives
• Timeline:
  • Up to 6 months, after which the program will be assessed, and either unused tokens sent back to the DAO, or rolled into a future program if the DAO sees the program and its subsequent reporting successful.

Governance & Working Group

• Custody of Funds: ENS tokens held by a designated DAO multisig (likely Metagov WG?)
  • Discussion here needed from MetaGov, Ecosystem and Public goods working groups, the idea would be to have oversight from an ‘official’ WG for this temporary WG.
• Contract Naming Incentives Working Group Responsibilities:
  • Maintain a public shortlist spreadsheet of target contracts and infrastructure providers.
  • Approve awards via a simple majority, publish rationale and scores.
  • Create a consistent rubric for incentive allocation for contracts
  • Conflict of Interest - members recuse where applicable.
  • Establish ENS best practices and guidelines for naming aimed at target project categories (Dapps, DAOs, protocols)

Success Metrics

• Number of contracts named during program
• Campaign engagement and support from leading L2 network, top tier protocols/Dapps and key voices in the Ethereum ecosystem
• Contract naming coverage across top protocols/DAOs by TVL/volume
• Wallet/explorer coverage for named contracts
• Standards adoption: # of repo templates, plugin downloads, PRs merged
• Cost-effectiveness: $ENS per impactful contract

Timeline

• Proposal: Taking this proposal through forum and working group discussions
• Vote: Once the proposal has been discussed (and edited), it will be presented as an onchain proposal to the DAO to be voted on.
• Kick off: Empower Enscirbe and a temporary working group to publish target shortlist, begin outreach, open submissions, etc. As well as creating content (tweets/articles) about this season!
• Monthly: Review submissions, distribute grants, update dashboard / spreadsheet
• Month 6: Final review with KPIs and recommendation back to the wider DAO.

Caveats

During and post program we expect to see a measurable and meaningful increase in both contract naming with ENS and awareness of the importance of this for improving Ethereum UX and security.

However, given the wide range of targets, the speed with which they can comply with best practices and recommendations will vary. Where there are projects with large treasuries/TVL and significant user bases, it may not be possible to comply fully with recommendations in the given timelines, especially if they come onboard later in the season.

Hence vocal commitment or intent to to embrace this initiative could be considered a success for some projects should integration/naming work not be completed within the bounds of the initial season. ENS token incentives could prove to be valuable in getting some of these key projects over the line.

Additionally, there are limitations with respect to the pool of smart contracts which can have primary names set. There have been discussions on potential ways forward, however it is anticipated that through this initiative a better understanding of approaches to increase the potential coverage could be established.

To keep messaging simple, whilst primary naming is preferred, where not possible, a forward resolving name should be considered a win.

[liubenben]

This is awesome, contract naming adoption is as important as the eoa address naming.
The only thing that wasn’t mentioned here is how to let the mainstream contracts know there will be such a season.

[vegayp]

There will be an outreach and onboarding process, the ENScribe team has done a great job on drafting a list of potential participants.

The hope I believe, is to do a manual process at the beginning, and once things get going, people will be aware of it and reach out to be part of.

[AvsA]

Smart contract naming is a very important topic. I would start by looking at the most used tokens, NFTs and Defi products and asking the following questions:

• Do they have a reverse ENS name?
• If they don’t, do at least their main project has an ENS name?
• Do their smart contract have a way to execute a reverse name?
• Does the smart contract at least has an admin or owner() function which could do it for them?
• If they do, who to reach in order to help them?
• If they don’t, what changes can we do to reverse registrar to allow it?

That would be my approach.

I’m not sure why this project is being put forward not as a “we want to tackle this issue” and instead “we want to put to a vote to form a committee to set up a budget to study the possibility of addressing this issue at a later date”

[jkm.eth]

As a deep-in-the-weeds developer, having contracts named would be a huge help. However, I’m not sure how the leaderboard idea would work as a motivation.

ENS has 8 contracts. Uniswap has 7. Rocketpool has 60. It’s not possible for ENS to take top spot on the leaderboard unless they deployed 53 unneeded contracts, which is certainly not the behavior we want to incentivize.

I’m sure you’ve already thought of this aspect so I’m not trying to “well actually” the situation, but I would like to see a more specific plan about how people will actually be incentivized to do what we want them to do.

Also, to add to what AvsA said, simply naming a contract isn’t very valuable if you don’t know who has proven ownership of it. To avoid malicious contracts impersonating reputable ones, all contracts need to be tied to their owners in some verifiable way.

[conor]

Thanks @AvsA

We started performing data gathering exercises on targets for contract naming (which you can see here), incorporating some of the questions you highlight also makes sense.

Since the beginning of the year, the Enscribe team has been focused on building infrastructure to simplify contract naming for teams. This has been driven by a lack of adoption of ENS for naming contracts, which we believe presents a huge growth opportunity for the ENS protocol.

This is something we want to change, but if we can do it as a coordinated effort, it can increase reach. James’ proposal seeks to help by providing incentives in the form of ENS tokens for this activity.

We’d hope to see this unfold such that through contract naming season there will also be learnings about ways in which we can increase the surface area of primary contract naming through enhancements to the protocol, which is something we’ve been actively trying to do too as part of our work.

[conor]

Appreciate your thoughts @jkm.eth.

A cornerstone of this will be establishing best practices for contract naming for our targerts — user-facing contracts, protocols, DAOs, etc

Alignment with these practices will be more important than the volume of contracts being named. We want to incentivise naming that is of genuine benefit to Ethereum/ENS as opposed to simply naming for naming’s sake.

With respect to ownership of contracts, there are limitations that we’re all aware of with respect to primary naming which we want to address as mentiond above.

Hence, in the absence of being able to set primary names, we would want to be able to see contracts being named using 2LDs that are aligned with the projects they are from. Not just any person assigning names to contracts for widely-used projects.

If we continue to work alongside ENSAwards, I expect the leaderboard will be curated as opposed to something that is purely driven by onchain metrics. More detailed naming-specific metrics would likely be developed in Enscribe instead of being a core part of ENSAwards which could be a great entry point for this and future ENS campaigns.

[GozmanGonzalez]

This is a really exciting idea. Clear contract names might sound small, but I’ve seen firsthand how confusing unnamed addresses can be for users and even DAOs. When a wallet or explorer shows a string of random characters, people hesitate, and sometimes they miss out or get tricked by scam addresses. Having readable ENS names makes things feel safer and more human.

I like that this isn’t just talk, you’re suggesting a leaderboard and a dedicated group to actually reach out to projects and help them onboard. It feels practical and focused, not just another proposal that sits on the forum. Using ENS tokens as small nudges for adoption also makes sense; sometimes even good projects need a little push to set things up.

The six-month window gives it enough time to test without dragging on forever. If it works, it could really set a new norm for how protocols, DAOs, and wallets present themselves. I’d be happy to see this move forward and would love to follow the progress or help amplify the effort when it kicks off.

[raffy]

In discussion with @gregskril, we were considering the following redesign for ReverseClaimer → Add `ReverseNamer` by adraffy · Pull Request #482 · ensdomains/ens-contracts · GitHub

Any input or suggestions welcome.

[nischal.eth]

Hey @raffy Thanks for this PR, added a few comments. Let me know if it makes sense

[lightwalker.eth]

Our team supports the goal of naming more smart contracts and the “ENS Contract Naming Season” initiative.

There’s a nice alignment between these goals and the work we’re doing on the ENS leaderboards at ENSAwards.org which was part of our SPP2 scope of work.

Currently the ENSAwards.org site only contains temporary placeholder content – but we’re working to launch leaderboards with real content “soon”. The vision for ENSAwards includes creating ENS leaderboards for a broad spectrum of ENS best practices – but for the initial leaderboards we’re focused on supporting ENS Contract Naming Season and promoting the great work by the Enscribe team.

We’re currently deep in the design and planning stage for this and working in coordination with the Enscribe team and other contributors cited above in this thread.

[nischal.eth]

In addition to the already shared DAO contract naming best practices, we have added a new section for Consumer Apps naming best practices (ecosystem apps like games, social, NFTs, messaging, etc.).

Would love to get some feedback on this!

Docs Link

[Sov]

I am supportive of moving forward with this. The teams coming together to propose the idea have a solid track record as trusted contributors with the technical background to execute. Contract naming is practical and addresses a real UX gap.

Some things worth considering as we move forward: the ownership verification point raised to prevent impersonation and publishing a draft allocation rubric for the ENS tokens even if it gets refined during execution. These seem like reasonable implementation details to sort out. The 6-month time-box and budget are sensible for a pilot.

Excited to see where it goes from here. Thanks again for surfacing!

[James]

Hey frens, just posting an update and more info here on the forum before this proposal goes up for vote.

Now that the proposal to name ENS core contracts has passed (and can be used as an example to other DAOs!). The ‘Contract Naming Season Pod’ (made up of 6 members, myself, @conor @nischal.eth, @gregskril, @lightwalker.eth, @estmcmxci) are now ready to progress both this proposal and the rollout of the first ENS contract naming season!

We imagine this season will run for roughly 6 months to the start of 2026. With the initial goals of; standing up the contract naming Pod, outreach to an initial group of protocols, marketing ENS contract naming (twitter posts & spaces, blogs, content, etc), and empowering Enscribe to drive forward contract naming with support from the wider group.

The temp check above outlines $75k in USDC and 10k ENS tokens, which we propose will be initially be sent to the Metagov multisig, with half to be sent to the Pod multisig after the proposal passes (to be distributed on a ~monthly bases to contributors), and with the remainder to be distributed to the Pod in 2026 with the blessing of the Metagov stewards and the DAO. We expect a majority of the USDC will be delivered to the Enscribe team with a minority going to wider pod contributors. All ENS tokens will be used as outwards facing incentives to different protocols and DAOs that name their contracts during this initial contract naming season.

Barring any large blockers from delegates, working groups, ENS labs or the community, this proposal will be posted later this week!

[Limes]

I would love to see a world where all contracts are named, similar to how today all websites have domain names with IP addresses abstracted away, so I am extremely supportive of the mission.

I have two things I’d love to see to vote yes on this proposal

1. Improvements to the data collection:

Including a screenshot from the targets for contract naming sheet for reference.

Instead of the columns you have listed, I think it’d be helpful to see the following:
- Project
- Contract title
- Contract address
- Eligible for reverse resolution?
- Primary name (if named)

This structure would give us a clearer picture: for the 28 projects listed, how many contracts are eligible for reverse resolution and can be used to track the adoption rate over the course of the program.

Side Note: For the Primary name column you can use @gregskril’s tool for resolving primary names in google sheets.

2. Success criteria

I’d also like to see explicit success metrics defined for this initiative. For example:

“If X out of Y eligible contracts identified in the contract naming sheet are given primary names, the initiative will be considered successful and all of the ENS tokens incentives will have been distributed.”

Having quantifiable goals will help align everyone’s actions.

[conor]

Hey @Limes, thanks for your post. A couple of clarifications from our side:

1. We linked to project documentation sites rather than listing individual contract addresses for a couple of reasons:

   • The number of contracts. especially at the protocol layer is numerous, and a single sheet would quickly become unwieldy.
   • These references also evolve over time, so it makes more sense to do deeper diligence once projects show genuine interest in naming their contracts.

   When that happens, we can create a detailed breakdown of contracts for those specific projects if it helps them, similar to the approach taken for the ENS DAO. The closest thing we’ll have to a master list will likely be through ENS Awards, where projects’ named contracts will appear under their respective categories (DAOs, apps, L2s, DeFi protocols, etc.).

2. The projects highlighted are ones we’d like to see naming their contracts, it’s not a definitive target list (Farcaster and Zora are just a couple of examples we don’t include). Even if a portion of them embrace naming, that’s still a big win. The broader aim is to encourage adoption and raise awareness, rather than setting strict quantitative goals that might limit how we define success.

[Limes]

Two questions:

1. What is your estimate for the % of nameable contracts in the projects you listed? I ask this because I learned when writing the Name Core DAO Addresses proposal that if a contract doesn’t have an owner function, it can’t be given a primary name. So I have no idea if the number of nameable contracts is 5 or 500. I think it would be worthwhile to sample a small number of contracts to estimate what percentage is actually nameable.

2. What is the specific goal? “Encourage adoption and raise awareness” could mean talking to one person and calling it a day. I understand you don’t want to limit the pool of eligible projects too narrowly, but the goal could be more specific:

Our goal is to give primary names to contracts of X notable projects.

[conor]

On these points:

1. We’re pulling together some sample data, but what we can confirm is thata approx 2% of smart contracts on the Ethereum mainnet implement Ownable. Which means a small subset of contracts can have primary names set. (source Enscribe Dune Dashboard)

   However, through naming season we do want to learn about the standards different protocols use for contracts with a view for finding ways we can expand the criteria for primary naming of contracts. This builds on our ongoing work on the subject.

2. Getting some top tier projects to embrace contract naming would be a good win. As this should create a trickle down effect. However, infrastructure providers such as wallet providers and explorers also need to integrate ENS at the contract level too. We need both sets of projects to play ball. Having one, but not the other would not be ideal. Hence the number of projects alone is a misleading metric, a lot depends on which projects.

[James]

Proposal now live on Tally & Agora

[blockful]

Live proposal calldata security verification

Calldata executed the expected outcome. The simulation and tests of the live proposal can be found here.

It can be checked by cloning the repo and running:
forge test --match-path "src/ens/proposals/ep-6-22/*" -vv