Ethereum Name ServiceENS tells DHS it logs no IP or KYC data
ENS responded to a letter from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by explaining that it collects no IP logs or KYC data and pointing the agency to the public blockchain, where ENS registration data lives. The exchange was shared on X by @JamesJohnBeck (jamesbeck.eth) and amplified by ENS's official account.
- Per the post, Aurbelis — Alexander Urbelis, ENS Foundation Executive Director — led the response, teaching DHS that ENS does not log IP addresses or identity data and has no centralized dataset to hand over.
- Urbelis also advised that the form of the response matters: reply with a formal paper letter, not an email.
- ENS did not disclose the letter's contents beyond the redacted copy circulating; the post's media tags include Web3Privacy Now and Alexander Urbelis.
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.
