The domain name industry is in turmoil again, with ENS developers accusing Unstoppable Domains of stealing their achievements
The public confrontation between the two industry leaders over patent infringement issues.Author: Sharon, BlockBeats
Table of Contents: · ENS developers accuse Unstoppable Domains of stealing their development成果 · Two leaders in the domain name sector: ENS and Unstoppable Domains · ENS launches new gateway and open sources it, now live on Optimism mainnet
Yesterday, the domain name sector experienced a significant upheaval.
ENS developers accuse Unstoppable Domains of stealing their development成果
On November 16, Nick Johnson, the chief developer of ENS, the leading Ethereum Web3 domain name provider, took to social media to accuse Web3 domain provider Unstoppable Domains of lacking legal support and constraints from the Web3 Domain Alliance organization.
At the same time, Nick accused Unstoppable Domains of unilaterally applying for innovative patents based on ENS development: "In January this year, Unstoppable Domains obtained the first patent, numbered US11558344------for resolving blockchain domain names. This patent is entirely based on innovations developed by ENS, without any novel innovations of its own."
He continued to state that Unstoppable Domains is still seeking to apply for more patents. Nick then put forward ENS's demands: "No organization can rely on such a non-binding commitment when it comes to its core business. Therefore, we request that Unstoppable Domains provide legal guarantees for its public commitments and propose an unconditional and irrevocable patent commitment."
Nick pointed out that if this cannot be done, ENS is ready to challenge the patent at any time.
It is reported that Nick publicly called out Unstoppable Domains because "ENS and Unstoppable Domains had attempted to communicate privately but failed to make any progress."
Subsequently, Unstoppable Domains founder Matthew Gould stated that the commitment proposed by ENS is "unnecessary," while avoiding discussing core issues with Nick and instead inviting him to join the Web3 Domain Alliance.
"We continue to extend an open invitation for you to join the Web3 Domain Alliance and promote open Web3 naming, not limited to ENS. Just as ICANN is important to DNS, standard organizations are equally crucial for Web3. We look forward to bringing the world into Web3 domain names and becoming friendly competitors in this field. We may not agree on everything, but it is helpful to discuss and dialogue together."
Nick responded by stating that he will continue to uphold his position: "I believe our proposal is quite reasonable."
Two leaders in the domain name sector: ENS and Unstoppable Domains
In fact, the two core entities of this upheaval—ENS and Unstoppable Domains—are both leaders in the domain name sector, just with different focuses.
ENS, as a public chain domain, is one of the top projects in the Web3 domain field, founded by former Google software engineer Nick Johnson in 2016. Initially, ENS was a side project authorized by the Ethereum Foundation, which later supported the establishment of the ENS team. ENS has not taken any external funding and has only received donations from organizations like the Ethereum Foundation.
On the other hand, Unstoppable Domains is a Web3 domain registrar, often selling multiple suffixes of Web3 domain names that are highly related to Web3.
It is worth noting that the registration process of Unstoppable Domains is not fully on-chain like projects such as ENS, but rather a centralized registration management + on-chain NFT minting model: users can register using Google login + credit card payment, and then mint NFTs on Polygon (except for .zil domains, which are minted on Zilliqa).
Related reading: 《Web3 Domain Sector: The Ice and Fire Facing ENS》
"ENS's trading volume has consistently ranked in the top ten on Opensea, with two peaks in trading activity in November 2021 and April-May 2022. As of early November 2022, ENS had registered 2.62 million domain names, 573,000 registered users, and 508 ecological cooperation projects.
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Unstoppable Domains may not be particularly well-known in the Chinese community, but its recognition and marketing efforts overseas are significant. Currently, the total number of domain names registered by Unstoppable Domains has exceeded 2.7 million, with over 500 applications integrating Unstoppable Domains."
ENS launches new gateway and open sources it, now live on Optimism mainnet
On the other side of the conflict, on the same day, ENS launched a new gateway and open-sourced it.
On November 16, ENS launched the EVM gateway and has open-sourced it, including a universal CCIP-Read gateway framework and Solidity library. It is reported that this gateway is the foundation for the next-generation L2 resolver and the first step in the L2 roadmap, allowing L1 smart contracts to efficiently and securely obtain and verify states from other L2s, aiming to enhance interoperability between L1 and L2.
In addition, the EVM gateway is now live on the Optimism mainnet and Goerli. It is reported that the gateway features a modular design and can help achieve simple and trustless operations, allowing users to operate their own gateways or use existing ones: "Changing the target (the L2 you want to read) is as simple as swapping the validator contract address."
