Name Wrappers for Normies

In case you missed it, the ENS Foundation announced that the long-awaited feature of ENS Name Wrappers will be available to the public within a week! If you’re like me, you’ve read some explanations of it on crypto Twitter but your eyes glazed over at all the jargon.

Have no fear! I am going to break it down in terms that are simple enough for anyone to wrap their brain around. Get it? “Wrap”?! Alas, I digress…

Name Wrappers Explained

When you register a ENS name, the registrar issues you an ERC-721 NFT. (You may be a normie but I’m assuming you know what an NFT is). As an ENS owner, you already have the ability to create subdomains. For example, let’s say your ENS is smith.eth. You can create subnames for your children: alice.smith.eth, bob.smith.eth, and charlie.smith.eth.

Even though smith.eth is an NFT, your subnames are not. Until now.

[Name Wrapper has entered the chat]

Beginning next week, any ENS name will have the ability to be wrapped. This means that you can trade in your rusty old ERC-721 NFT for a shiny new ERC-1155 NFT, which has more features and controls than its predecessor.

The Smith Family ENS

Let’s use our Smith Family example above to show you what I mean.

Think of smith.eth as the Parent, and the subnames alice.smith.eth, bob.smith.eth, and charlie.smith.eth as the Children.

Prior to the Name Wrapper, Alice, Bob, and Charlie were not NFTs. After the Name Wrapper, not only is smith.eth converted into an ERC-1155 NFT, your children’s names are NFTs too.

The Name Wrapper gives both the parent and the child various permissions and controls, which are called “fuses”. Similar to a normal young family, the child’s life is under full control of the parent. However, the parent can elect to give certain controls to the child as he or she sees fit.

Parental Controls

Even though they are NFTs, the subnames are non-transferrable and they cannot separate (unwrap) themselves from the parent. But let’s say that Charlie wants to emancipate himself from his parent. Daddy Smith can burn the fuse labeled “Parent Cannot Control” (PCC) in order to allow Charlie to be emancipated. Once this occurs, Charlie’s subname is completely free from his parent’s authority.

Charlie is now free to burn other owner-controlled fuses and subname fuses.

If a subname has not been emancipated, it still has the following capabilities:

• Unwrap
• Rewrap
• Transfer
• Set the Resolver
• Create its own subnames

To read more about the technical aspects of these behaviors, click here.

What Are Fuses Again?

Fuses are the same as features or options. All Name Wrappers have some fuses that are standard and come prebuilt within the contract. They also have several fuses that are undefined, meaning that the parent can customize them with his own rules.

Once a fuse has been ignited, this action cannot be undone or reversed. The only time the fuses reset to their original state is when the name expires. When the parent’s name hits expiry, that name along with all subnames will expire.

Getting Into the Weeds

There are more details to the process that I won’t get into here, such as locking the Name Wrapper, additional expiry settings, and combining the Emancipate-Lock-Burn functions.

But what you should know is that the Name Wrapper feature not only attaches itself to the parent and the children, it carries downward through the entire lineage of subnames for a given TLD. Thus, you could have my.favorite.child.of.charlie.smith.eth, which would be seven subnames deep, and each level would function as an ERC11-55 NFT.

Also note that subnames can be held in varying states: Charlie can be emancipated; Bob can be emancipated and locked; and Alice can be only wrapped and not emancipated.

Real World Use Cases

In the future, companies will be able to use Name Wrappers in several ways. For example, let’s say that Ticketmaster decides to issue all concert tickets for the upcoming Drake tour as NFTs with the drake.eth name wrapper. Everyone who buys a ticket would receive a unique subname i.e. sarahsmith.drake.eth. This NFT would function as their entry to the concert and proof of purchase.

Ticketmaster could also build in some customized fuses that would allow certain NFT holders to unlock perks such as access to a VIP seating section or discounted merchandise. They could even create fuses for 10 lucky subnames to meet the artist after the show!

Ticketmaster would also have the ability to set the expiry of these subnames. Perhaps they engage a fuse that allows the holder to purchase anything from the Drake merch store online at a 25% discount, but only for up to 3 days following the concert. Or maybe they create a fuse that allows concertgoers who purchased platinum seats to have access to the fan club for a year. The possibilities are endless!

While this article barely scrapes the surface of everything a Name Wrapper can unlock, hopefully you can see that the downstream effects will reach far and wide.

What other use cases do you expect Name Wrappers to be used for? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter.