The Ecosystem Working Group was established with the passing of EP0.4, relevant section highlighted below.
ENS Ecosystem: continuing development and improvement of the ENS protocol and ecosystem, with a focus on all technical matters related to ENS;
Ecosystem grants are designed to support projects and developers contributing to the ENS ecosystem, with a strong bias towards technical oriented projects.
The grant funding is done retroactively based on value created for the ecosystem. This can be demonstrated by historical usage and/or novel use cases. The Stewards of Ecosystem are empowered by [EP1.8] to use their discretion.
This thread serves as an ongoing summary of grants by Ecosystem Working Group for the fifth term.
I’ve integrated ENS resolving into several projects now (both my own and as a contributor/collaborator), but found the standard approach of querying ENS contracts directly to be quite slow for most use cases, and can quickly eat up Alchemy/Infura node resources if you’re not careful.
To help with this, I built an incredibly fast API (thanks to Cloudflare’s edge caching) for resolving and reverse-resolving ENS names and addresses (30-50ms with a warm cache).
Ecosystem stewards are awarding frolic.eth 10,000 USDC in grant funding. ENS Ideas serves seven million API calls a month. Their open source API is integrated into multiple platforms and has consistent usage. The stewards appreciate the work that you do. Thank you.
✦ ENS Data — free and easy way to get ENS text records, avatars, and NFTs ✦
Look up all available Ethereum Name Service text records for any address and get them back in convenient JSON format.
I’ve created a tiny but powerful headless API that’s free for everyone. Use it in your web3 app or spice up your web2 apps with an ENS integration.
Perfect tool for pre-filling people’s profiles with their ENS records, displaying their avatars and headers in your web3 app, checking people’s social media handles, resolving ENS names to addresses for airdrops, pulling in data into DAO spreadsheets or other productivity apps, you name it…
All without having to set up your own resolvers and running up lots of extra hits on your Infura/Alchemy plan. Small community apps and and nonconventional projects should really benefit from this approach.
Almost 12,000,000 requests delivered
ENS Data has proven to be a useful service used by many independent developers, artists, apps in the Ethereum ecosystem, and projects created by PartyDAO, Surreal and Kiwi News.
Notable features:
Return all available ENS text records in a JSON format.
Find a wallet’s primary ENS by providing an address.
Initial requests are cached for 48 hours so subsequent API calls are blazing fast.
What will this grant be used for?
Covering expenses of running the infrastructure for providing this API and keeping it free for everyone in the community for many years.
Additional improvements and development.
Providing support for developers and non-developers wanting to use ENS Data.
Thank you for your continued support, ENS!
Steward Commentary
Ecosystem stewards are awarding pugson 10,000 USDC in grant funding. Developers in the ENS ecosystem are using ensdata everyday to make their lives easier, simplifying interacting with ENS. Ensdata silently works, but the stewards hear you. Keep building!
Our SDK was used by a very cool ETH Global London hackathon project, fluidpay
What’s next
More chains coming very soon
Swapping & bridging funds from within the Fluidkey interface
Giving users more control over which funds to use when sending an outgoing transaction by using labels for increased privacy (e.g. salary.user.fkey.eth, personal.user.fkey.eth, etc.)
Auditing of the open source core crypto library
A big thank you to the ENS community for being early supporters on this journey - we are very grateful and are excited to keep building on top of ENS!
Steward Commentary
Ecosystem stewards are awarding Fluidkey 25,000 USDC in grant funding. Fluidkey is a great example of a novel use-case of ENS. The project is professionally executed and well received by the broader Ethereum community. We find it especially encouraging to see the rate of progress over the last six months. This team ships. Thank you.
We launched our no-code Shortcut Creator Tool, that allows anyone to permissionsly deploy useful contracts. First 2 days of launch and over 100 Shortcuts have been created by the community.
Mission: Make crypto simpler and safer.
Product: Shortcuts
A Shortcut is a bundle of onchain actions which can be executed by sending funds to an ENS domain or contract address.
Examples (Send ETH from Mainnet)
toarbitrum.eth: Instant bridge to Arbitrum.
tobase.eth: Instant bridge to Base.
stake.onlido.eth: Earn yield via Lido + Curve.
ethtousdc.eth: Swap ETH for USDC.
Benefits
No Phishing Risk: Users from novice to expert are falling to phishing scams, this year alone hundreds of millions have been lost. Shortcuts are ENS intents
Ease of Use: Simply type in or copy a Shortcut name into the “Send To” field in your wallet and the Shortcut does the rest.
Rewarding: Shortcut point system rewards creators and users of Shortcuts.
Ecosystem stewards are awarding onthis 25,000 USDC in grant funding. onthis improves user experience for Ethereum by leveraging ENS. The reception has been strong with over 300ETH deposited via shortcuts. This is no small feat. Thank you for building with ENS.
beaconcha.in explorer is the backbone for Ethereum’s consensus and execution layer. It is the only all-in-one (CL+EL) explorer and played a pivotal role during the merge and subsequent hardforks.
Our mission is to provide a comprehensive explorer, including future support for Layer 2s, so users won’t need multiple explorers to access their data. ENS plays a vital role in this, significantly enhancing the user experience.
Our current integration is straightforward and covers the most commonly used ENS features:
As hinted, we’re developing a new version of the explorer that will include more EVM chains. This version will offer cross-chain ENS availability to further enhance the UX.
Steward Commentary
Ecosystem stewards are awarding beaconcha.in 25,000 USDC in grant funding. Beaconchain, despite it’s name, it is a full featured block explorer with ever expanding ENS support. Running a block explorer takes incredible amount of effort, but the result is accessible data for all. We are further pleased by the open source nature of the project and the dedication from the team. Thank you.
NameSys has built sets of infrastructural stacks interfacing ENS & Ethereum with generic off-chain systems for diverse purposes. NameSys stack has so far securely interfaced IPFS/NS, Solana and generic databases with Ethereum.
SERVICES
NameSys Off-Chain Resolver & Client(s)
NameSys off-chain resolver CCIP2.eth and the associated clients have securely off-loaded ENS records to IPFS/NS and generic databases implementing a novel keyless algorithm for key management. With NameSys, you can manage your ENS records at zero cost.
Stealth Payments
NameSys off-chain resolver is capable of stealth payments to ENS names at zero additional cost, and this feature is available in the advanced client.
NameSys Lite Client
We launched NameSys Lite client in January 2024 capable of dynamic record updates and with increased ease-of-access for the users.
IPNS.eth
IPNS.eth is a ‘keyless’ IPNS client capable of pinning IPFS records for users without sharing their private keys. This is the first service of its kind and removes a severe security flaw plaguing the IPFS/NS ecosystem. It was launched in January 2024.
Other Stuff
DEV3.eth
dev3.eth is a GitHub-based end-to-end ENS prototype available on NPM since December 2023.
NotAPI.eth
notAPI.eth web3 API prototype is functional since November 2023 and can be found here. This service will enter alpha stage in the coming weeks and it will be similar to onthis.eth albeit concentrating on data availability instead of swaps.
RESEARCH
ERC-5559 aka CCIP-Write
NameSys is leading the authorship of a new ERC-5559 standard which will upgrade the previous version to include secure and keyless deferrals to databases and IPFS/NS. This will pave for integrating NameSys resolver in the ENS App at core via new CCIP-Write.
ENS on Solana
NameSys is currently finalising the proposal for offering ENS on Solana in collaboration with Solana Foundation. This proposal will be (re-)submitted to ENS DAO following feedback on the TempCheck, after/if/when an agreement with Solana Foundation is reached in the coming days/week(s); discussions are in their final stages with SF to this effect. This work will utilise a successor standard to ERC-5559 capable of deferring write operations to Solana. Prototype resolver and gateway worker codes are available on GitHub.
All services by NameSys are open-source and free of cost. Source codes are available at NameSys.eth · GitHub.
Steward Commentary
Ecosystem stewards are awarding NameSys 25,000 USDC in grant funding. NameSys is working on several projects including making it easier to interact with ENS names without extra cost and doing so without giving away private information. Their work on CCIP-Write is of particular interest as this unlocks future capabilities. We look forward to how their open source contributions evolve.
Over the last year, we’ve launched a suite of essential tools and platforms for the ENS community,
Webhash (webhash.com): An innovative no-code platform enabling ENS domain owners to easily create decentralized websites (Dwebsites) without technical know-how. This tool democratizes access to the decentralized web by simplifying the process of building and deploying Dwebsites.
We have conducted two buildathons to motivate ENS holders to create decentralized websites (dWebsites) for .eth domains, distributing prizes totaling around $2200 among the competition winners. More buildations are coming soon.
New blocks we are developing to integrate into dwebsites
Farcaster Block: Enables the integration of Farcaster feeds into an ENS dWebsite, allowing users to display their Farcaster social media content.
Lens Block: Facilitates the addition of Lens platform feeds to an ENS dWebsite, offering a seamless way to showcase social interactions.
POAP Block: Allows for the display of POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol) collections on an ENS dWebsite, highlighting user participation and achievements.
Crypto Payment Block: Empowers .eth domain holders to accept cryptocurrency payments directly through their dWebsite, streamlining the transaction process.
Other projects we are actively developing for ENS ecosystem
ENS Website Resolver (Chrome Web Store): A cutting-edge browser extension for Chromium-based browsers that allows seamless access to Dwebsites hosted on ENS domains. This extension bridges the traditional web and the decentralized web, making ENS-based content more accessible.
ENSrecords.eth: We’re building a Layer 2 solution for ENS records management, designed to enhance your ENS experience with fast, affordable, and reliable ENS record updates on L2.
MyWallet (mywallet.is): A revolutionary service offering free, gasless registration of ENS names. By eliminating gas fees, MyWallet has significantly lowered the barriers to entry for new users, encouraging widespread adoption of ENS names.
ETH.lk : A web application designed to dynamically generate web pages for ENS domains. Eth.lk provides an automated and seamless experience in creating customised web pages for any .eth domain owner. It is particularly built for ENS domain holders who seek to enhance their online presence with minimal effort and technical know-how.
Steward Commentary
Ecosystem stewards are awarding Webhash 25,000 USDC in grant funding. Webhash is a community favorite decentralized website building platform made accessible to many with its no-code tools. Engaging the community in the way Hid does builds enthusiasm for everybody and proliferates the value proposition of ENS. We are warmed by Hid’s dedication and commitment to ENS and for that we thank him.
Look up all available Ethereum Name Service text records for any address and get them back in convenient JSON format. 
Almost 12,000,000 requests delivered
Notable features:
What will this grant be used for?
ENS!
- privacy-preserving ENS names
