“We want to be the naming system for every digital resource in the world.”

Biography:

Nick Johnson started his engineering career in 2001 in New Zealand. He later took a job at Google, where he worked for over seven years across two stints with the firm. In 2016, Johnson was poached for a role with Ethereum. He holds a BSc in computer science from the University of Canterbury. 

Johnson has made an impact in the Web3 domain as the founder and lead developer of Ethereum Name Service, which enables decentralized naming for wallets and addresses in the Web3 ecosystem. ENS has multiple other use cases, including simplifying user experience around cryptocurrency transactions as well as storing avatars and profile information. The 2021 airdrop of its native token, ENS, helped establish airdrops as a trend that many other projects have since used as a growth hack, albeit with mixed results.

Johnson’s 2022:

Toward the end of 2021, Johnson launched the ENS DAO, which rallied to a $1 billion market capitalization the very next day. ENS names were in high demand in 2022, with Paradigm.eth selling for 420 ETH. Ethereum Name Service also became popular with NFT collectors, with three- and four-digit ENS addresses hitting record-high sales on platforms like OpenSea. ENS NFT volumes in December stood at 116,000 ETH, with a market cap of 57 ETH and nearly 623,000 holders

The ENS DAO was one of the most active decentralized autonomous organizations in the Web3 world in 2022, with tokenholders voting on 23 governance proposals. The DAO also created “small grants,” which gave grants to the top five projects (as voted on by ENS tokenholders) to work on their proposal.

Johnson led the creation of Thorin, a React Javascript-based design system for ENS with an improved user experience, speed optimization, and mobile-friendliness. Thorin is still in alpha and offers standards for developers building user experiences on ENS. Furthermore, Johnson and ENS collaborated with Chainlink on its open-source Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) standard for cross-chain communication. CCIP aims to be the universal connection between blockchain networks and will help unlock isolated tokens.

Johnson’s 2023:

As of the start of 2023, over 2.5 million registered ENS domains are held by over half a million users. This year could turn out to be a decisive year for Johnson, his initiatives and ENS. As the crypto market hopes to recover from one of the worst bear markets, the Web3 ecosystem continues to build more tools to on-ramp users. Johnson and ENS will likely work on upgrading the Thorin design system, which they created to provide an unparalleled user experience. Considering that Thorin is also made available as a standard React library for anyone to use, there should be more work on ENS, and building these libraries should ensure that the open-source community reaps the benefits.

Johnson will also work on scaling ENS with EIP-3668 and EIP-5559 this year. These standards provide a way by which off-chain lookups can be defined within smart contracts and should help achieve storage and transaction cost efficiencies on the Ethereum blockchain. Furthermore, with the ENS DAO starting to take shape, multiple community projects may be set in motion. With the Web3 market maturing, ENS and Johnson will have their hands full in 2023 to attract and retain users by creating better experiences.