Etherscan Seeks $1M Annual Sponsorship to Advance ENS Features

• Etherscan proposes $1 million in annual funding to enhance Ethereum Name Service (ENS) integration.
• The funding will be used to develop new features and expand ENS support to other Ethereum layers.
• The proposal also aims to expand the current support for .eth names to encompass additional domains like .xyz and .art.

Harith, a notable member of the team behind Etherscan, the well-known Ethereum blockchain explorer, has requested funding of $1 million per year to finance developments related to Ethereum Name Service (ENS).

Harith posted details about the million-dollar sponsorship request in a recent statement in the  ENS DAO forum, as spotlighted by the prominent Chinese reporter Colin Wu.

In the proposal, Harith underscored that the availability of ENS names on top-tier block explorers is crucial for sustaining and fostering ENS’s ongoing utilization and adoption. ENS, an open-source and decentralized naming system, facilitates mapping human-readable names to Ethereum addresses.

Harith mentioned that the funding proposal seeks leverage for the continuous development, support, and coverage of hosting fees related to ENS on Etherscan and the team-operated block explorers. 

Furthermore, the Etherscan team member highlighted several beneficial features Etherscan could build as part of this initiative. He noted Etherscan could augment the existing support for ENS on Ethereum Layer 1 and extend it to Ethereum Layer 2 explorers. The cited Ethereum layer 2 to potentially extend to include Optimism (OP), Arbitrum (ARB), Polygon (MATIC), Base, Linea, and Scroll.

Moreover, the proposal aims to expand the current support for .eth names to encompass additional domains like .xyz and .art. It also envisions support for off-chain names utilizing CCIP and incorporating support for DNS-based names such as .com.

Highlighting Etherscan’s past contributions to the ENS ecosystem, Harith detailed the team’s involvement since May 2017. It included support for ENS name forward resolution search, auctions list, address name tags, and various features introduced in subsequent years.

Importantly, Harith clarified that Etherscan maintains a transparent relationship with ENS DAO, affirming the absence of any conflict of interest. As a testament to this commitment, the team received a donation of 46,296.3 ENS tokens from ENS in November 2021. This donation amounted to $413,888.92.