The company behind the Ethereum Name Service, ENS Labs, is advancing with plans to establish its own layer-2 network, dubbed Namechain. Scheduled to go live by the end of next year, Namechain will leverage zero-knowledge rollups, a technology that accelerates blockchain transactions and reduces costs by minimizing on-chain data. This approach enables Namechain to process transactions off the main Ethereum network while maintaining full security at a lower cost. The network will utilize the infrastructure of an existing zero-knowledge chain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
ENS serves as the blockchain equivalent of the web's domain name service, providing human-readable names that are easier to remember than numerical addresses. The upcoming overhaul, ENSv2, will involve a complete re-architecture of the ENS protocol and its extension onto a layer-2 network. This development follows a series of announcements from major crypto firms launching their own layer-2 projects, with Namechain representing the next evolution of ENS, promising significant improvements in scalability, cost, and new applications.