Ethereum Name ServiceBridge Wallet warns users on ENS names that recently changed owner
Mt Pelerin's Bridge Wallet now warns users before they send funds to an ENS name that recently changed owner. The alert targets drop-catching, where someone registers an ENS name its previous owner forgot to renew, hoping to intercept payments meant for them.
- The warning appears when sending to an ENS domain whose ownership changed recently, regardless of network or asset.
- Bridge Wallet is Mt Pelerin's non-custodial wallet; the announcement was posted on X by @mtpelerin and amplified by ENS's account.
Ethereum Name Service
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain.
ENS’s job is to map human-readable names like ‘alice.eth’ to machine-readable identifiers such as Ethereum addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata. ENS also supports ‘reverse resolution’, making it possible to associate metadata such as canonical names or interface descriptions with Ethereum addresses.
ENS has similar goals to DNS, the Internet’s Domain Name Service, but has significantly different architecture due to the capabilities and constraints provided by the Ethereum blockchain. Like DNS, ENS operates on a system of dot-separated hierarchical names called domains, with the owner of a domain having full control over subdomains.
Top-level domains, like ‘.eth’ and ‘.test’, are owned by smart contracts called registrars, which specify rules governing the allocation of their subdomains. Anyone may, by following the rules imposed by these registrar contracts, obtain ownership of a domain for their own use. ENS also supports importing in DNS names already owned by the user for use on ENS.
