Summary
We are requesting funding from the ENS DAO to build a production network of gateways to support the rollout of reverse resolution for Arbitrum, Base, Linea, Optimism, and Scroll. These gateways will enable trustless ENS reverse name resolution as outlined in ENSIP-19. Our funding request prioritizes infrastructure, talent acquisition and retention, and ongoing development to sustain this critical ENS infrastructure.
Request
We are requesting $1,200,000 USDC annually and 100,000 ENS tokens.
This funding request covers infrastructure costs ($200,000) and staff salaries and operations ($1,000,000). The goal is to establish a stable funding stream to enable execution, long-term planning, and strategic investments in infrastructure, talent, and innovation.
We propose vesting the ENS tokens over a four-year period, with governance rights granted upon proposal approval.
Detailed Proposal
Of the 16+ million ENS names currently registered, nearly 90% use gateways. With ENSv2 and the rollout of reverse resolution from L2s (ENSIP-19), the number of name resolutions that utilize gateways will greatly increase. We anticipate that over the next few years, 99% of ENS names will be resolved using gateways.
Building on our research into ‘ENS Chain,’ we turned our focus to developing Unruggable Gateways, a powerful yet flexible extension of the original evmgateway codebase that allows trustless resolution of data from other blockchains. The first release candidate is currently undergoing an audit supported by the Metagov working group. There are currently live verifier deployments on testnet and operational gateways to support the testing of ENSIP-19.
Unruggable Gateways comprises two core components:
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Verifier smart contracts
Deployed on Layer 1, these contracts are the primary focus of the audit scope.
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Gateways
HTTP servers that handle client requests for data from supported chains and deliver proofs to the ERC 3668 callback on Layer 1, enabling data resolution.
This funding request supports the continued maintenance and ongoing development of the Unruggable Gateways codebase, as well as the operation of production gateways that can reliably serve responses to client requests at scale. It covers the infrastructure costs and the costs associated with supporting that infrastructure, including increasing the size of the Unruggable team.
Infrastructure
Core Infrastructure
To protect ENS’s standing as a trusted blockchain primitive, our gateways must be ready to handle traffic spikes proactively. With infrastructure costs scaling with demand, we cannot rely on reactive measures alone to manage sudden surges. Ensuring redundant, scalable gateways in advance is critical to maintaining reliable service and trust in ENS.
For context, the ethers.js package has over 1,400,000 weekly downloads, while Viem exceeds 500,000 weekly downloads. Both treat ERC-3668 as a first-class citizen, with specific focus on ENS name resolution.
The reverse address, and avatar are resolved on every Uniswap page load for example.
Name resolution, both forward and reverse, occurs in ecosystem applications during every page load. As we transition to a gateway-centric approach to ENS data resolution, we expect requests to our gateways to grow significantly.
Redundancy and Disaster Recovery
Operating redundant infrastructure is a necessity and there are significant associated costs. Failsafes geolocated around the world are required to to ensure quick response times from any location under any scenario, such as natural disasters. We also need to be able to adapt to inconsistent load patterns by automatically scaling our infrastructure in response to demand.
Monitoring and Security
Continuous monitoring is crucial to identifying and resolving issues before they affect users. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are a common threat to gateways and APIs. Additionally, bad actors, web crawlers, and bots must be properly managed. A proactive approach is essential to mitigating these risks effectively.
Research and Development
We aim to stay ahead of the curve by continuously improving and optimizing our gateways. We intend to dedicate resources to iterating on, and refining our gateway solution in response to actionable data from real world usage.
Unruggable Team
Unruggable currently consists of four team members: Prem, Thomas, Raffy, and Mely.
We are requesting funding directly from the ENS DAO to expand our team and secure predictable, ongoing financial support. Attracting and retaining top talent requires financial stability, as high-caliber engineers and DevOps professionals are unlikely to join or remain with an organization facing financial uncertainty or reliant on annual funding applications.
Our interpretation of the Service Provider program was that it was designed as a proving ground for ecosystem participants to demonstrate their ability to contribute to ENS development with the goal of further decentralizing the protocol. We believe that we have demonstrated our ability to do so. This represents a natural and successful outcome of the Service Provider program and can serve as a model for how DAOs onboard new development teams.
Team Expansion
We plan to add 2-4 team members over the coming year including an expert blockchain engineer and a DevOps engineer. Our compensation aligns with industry standards, aiming to recruit and retain top-tier talent.
Token Allocation Justification
Gateways play a critical role in ENS’s future, serving as core infrastructure for ENSv2. Our work on Unruggable Gateways is instrumental in advancing the protocol, and we will continue to contribute significantly.
Our ENS token request reflects our commitment to both development and governance responsibilities. To align incentives, we propose a four-year vesting schedule for the ENS tokens.
This allocation will enable us to submit executable proposals to the ENS DAO, requiring 100,000 tokens. We believe this request is justified based on our ongoing commitment to ENS and the DAO’s goals of decentralizing governance. Coupling our USDC funding with vested ENS tokens will further align incentives and demonstrate our long-term commitment to ENS.
Transparency
We will provide quarterly financial statements and technical progress reports, similar to those offered by ENS Labs for their funding requests.
Audits
We are currently undergoing the audit process for Unruggable Gateways across the five outlined “release chains,” funded by the ENS DAO Metagov working group. In the future, as we add new chains to support ENSIP-19 reverse resolution, we will request additional audit funding on a case-by-case basis. These costs are not included in this budget request.
Conclusion
Unruggable is dedicated to the success of ENS.
Co-founders premm.eth and clowes.eth have been committed to ENS for years and are well-known within the community and ecosystem.
raffy.eth is a best-in-class engineer with a history of significant contributions to ENS, and mely.eth is a passionate, well-respected advocate for ENS.
We have a proven track record and the technical skills needed to effectively contribute to ENS’s continued development.
We are requesting funding to operate a production gateway network to support the rollout of ENSIP-19. While this funding is not currently focused on forward resolution from other blockchains, including Namechain, we anticipate being able to support this functionality using the same gateways in the future.
This proposal aligns with the ENS DAO’s interests, as a production gateway network is critical infrastructure for ENS. It represents a concrete step toward decentralizing ENS development, enabling more focused efforts across ecosystem teams, enhancing productivity, and advancing the vision of a scalable, functional, cross-chain ENS protocol.
Contact Information
Prem Makeig (premm.eth) - CEO and Co-founder
- ENS Forum: premm.eth
- X/Telegram: @nxt3d
Thomas Clowes (clowes.eth) - CTO and Co-founder
- ENS Forum: clowes.eth
- X: @GUA
- Telegram: @thomasclowes
Thank you for considering our proposal. We are excited about the opportunity to contribute to ENS’s future and look forward to your support.
Appendix
Who Are We?
Unruggable is a UK-based limited company with no outside investors. Our company culture prioritizes high performance and the belief that our success is tied directly to the quality of our team members. Moving forward, we aim to attract passionate, talented individuals committed to ENS’s overall success. As a performance-oriented, for-profit company, we believe this structure is essential for ENS’s continued growth.
What Have We Accomplished Over the Past Year?
This year, we focused on ENSv2 and supporting L2-based development teams:
- 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. This included attending the Frontiers conference in SF and connecting with Mark Tyneway of OP Labs to explore creating a ZK-based OP Stack chain with one-hour fast finality.
- We built Unruggable Gateways (Gateway Documentation), a flexible and generic solution for proving the state of data on L2s against L1 Ethereum, enabling trustless forward and backward resolution of ENS names from any supported L2.
- We launched our gateway network with support for Arbitrum, Base, Linea, Optimism, and Scroll.
- We are actively and consistently engaged across all working groups, regularly contributing to discussions across Metagovernance, Ecosystem, and Public Goods.
- We are active and consistent participants in DAO governance.
- We are active and consistent contributors to the ENS discussion forums.
- mely.eth is an incredibly passionate and active advocate for ENS on social platforms.
- We supported developers at EthGlobal San Francisco to build on Unruggable Gateways.
- We supported other ENS Service Providers (e.g., Namespace, 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.
- LinkedResolver as an architectural approach to ENS moving forward.
- 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.
- Prem co-discovered a significant protocol bug in ENSv2, leading to a major protocol update.
- 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.
