Hi!

You haven’t really heard much from me for quite a while. You got a glimpse of our new app in the preview site, but that was back in February which was like 4 months ago… anyways… it was for a reason I promise.

I’m (very) excited to announce the new version of the ENS app, no longer just in preview form! Almost everything about the app is new. From the design, all the way to the contracts being used. Everything is faster, cleaner, and easier to use (I think).

For the moment it will be in alpha form, meaning there are a lot of bugs and a lot of missing features. We are releasing this alpha version mainly for two reasons:

1. To give the community a better glimpse into what’s to come
2. To get as much feedback as we can on design and functionality, as we build in public.

Not everything is there yet, so if you run into a button not working or a page not loading properly, don’t fret! We’ll be actively publishing new versions of the app from now on, and you’ll probably see most of these issues fixed.

What’s changed?

Mobile friendly layouts

As you can see, we’ve rethought everything from the ground up for mobile. Focusing on this was important, given the previous app’s mobile experience. The tab bar, search, and modal windows are just a few of the things we have mobile specific variants for.

Better search

The search bar is totally overhauled. Not only with you have a history of searches, but you’ll be able to see so much more information than you could before when searching. This means it’ll be much quicker to check or lookup names.

Speed improvements

There are a lot of performance improvements under the hood. Everything that we’re doing is now done in fewer network requests, with most duplicate requests removed. Essentially, you’ll see everything more quickly.

Everything else

• Quick look profiles
• Enhanced name filtering
• Better accessibility
• and more

What will change in the future?

For the moment, the alpha build only has read features, meaning nothing in the app will modify the state of the blockchain. Write features such as editing records are set for the near future, with more advanced features being further out in the roadmap.

Feature release sequence (subject to change)

• Alpha release - Read only release
• Setting primary names - Basic write functionality
• Advanced record editing
• Profile editing
• Name transfers
• Avatar uploads and NFT picker
• Name wrapping and subname creation - pending NameWrapper audit and deployment
• Registration - pending ETHRegistrarController audit and deployment
• Everything else (a lot of cool stuff)

For all the curious devs

Of course, the entire new app is open source on GitHub, but we’ve gone further than that. Behind the app is a whole new set of ENS related packages to go along with it, all of which you can use in your own projects, as well as being open-source. That being said, all the packages are subject to API changes since like the app, they are also in alpha.

ENSjs v3

Version 3 of ENSjs is a complete rethink over v2. With a fully dynamic loading system, you can use only the functions you need and nothing more, without having to worry about bundle size.

We use the new UniversalResolver, which allows many functions such as getting a name from an address (or vice-versa) to fetch all the required data in only a single network request. There are also easy to use batching functions you can use which minimise the amount of network requests for multiple function calls at once.

There’s so much more to it than that, so check it out yourself.

GitHub / NPM

Thorin

This is the new React design system powering v3 under the hood, and portrays our vision for design in web3. It’s simple and easy to use, not only for users, but also devs.

One of the core concepts behind Thorin is unifying the ENS ecosystem, so the experience feels much more intuitive for a user. So, if you’re building an ENS related app (or anything else for that matter), feel free to try out Thorin!

GitHub / NPM / Docs

To recap

The new app is the future of ENS, I’ve put a lot of work into this along with everyone else working on the front-end. Almost everything has changed, and we hope you like it!

You can visit the site here: alpha.ens.domains

If you have feedback or find glaring bugs/issues, we’re very easy to contact. Feel free to DM me on twitter (or any other front-end dev), create a post on the forum, or jump into the discord. Don’t do all three though!!!

Have a nice day :)