EnCirca, Inc. (“EnCirca”) announced on Monday (July 22) that it is the first generic top-level domain (gTLD) registrar accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—a nonprofit organization “responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet”—to accept applications for .ETH domain names.

In a press release shared with CryptoGlobe, EnCirca said that Ethereum’s .ETH “was created to map human-readable domains names to blockchain wallets, facilitating ease of use.” 

Tom Barrett, President of EnCirca, stated:

Billions of internet users will soon have blockchain wallets for sending and receiving crypto-currencies. In response, EnCirca has made it easy for brand owners to protect their trademarks on the blockchain.

Since blockchain domain names “are not regulated like .COM or .ORG domain names,” the “traditional trademark protection mechanisms to prevent cyber-squatting of brand names are nonexistent,” and that’s why EnCrica is advising brand owners to “defensively protect their trademarks in the .ETH top-level domain as soon as possible.”

EnCirca also says that the Ethereum Naming Service (ENS) has two types of application processes (depending on the length of the domain name that you wnt):

  • Short Character .ETH Domain Names (such as Apple.ETH), which are three to six characters long. Naturally, these are expected to be very popular, and so to “ensure that these short domain names are allocated to those who have already used the same string in a pre-existing domain like .COM or .US,” Ethereum will “award registrations to the applicant demonstrating the longest continuous use of the same name in an existing domain name extension, such as .COM, .US, .ORG etc.” You can pre-register until August 2. The price is based on the length of the domain name. Also, it should be pointed out that pre-registration does not “guarantee the name.” In the event that a name is pre-registered by more than one person/company, “the name will go into an auction phase.”
  • Long Character .ETH Domain Names (such as Microsoft.ETH), which are seven characters or longer.  These are “available now on a first-come, first-served basis,” and in fact, have been publicly available since May 2017 (with almost 300,000 names already registered). Note that “some names may be reserved or premium.”

You can apply to EnCirca for both short and long character .ETH domain names.

The timeline for the .ETH domain name launch is:

  • May 19: “Pre-registrations began”
  • August 2: “Last day for submissions”
  • October 2: “Short name auction bid period ends”
  • November 2: “Short name auction reveal period ends”

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