ENS Domains: What they are, and how to get one

Remember when suddenly every crypto celebrity and influencer with a name and rank started buying emoji domains? It feels like ages ago, but it must’ve been earlier this year when people began adding y.at addresses to their Twitter bios. The exchange I worked at back then also secured one. I bet it was expensive, as it featured the same key emoji thrice. If you wonder what range we’re talking about, on the high-end y.ats sold for more than $400,000.As with all new things on the block, I was intrigued, but I also couldn’t find an emoji combination that represented me and was affordable. A few months later, I’m glad I didn’t follow that fad. I realized you could buy emoji domains that aren’t as expensive as well.And then came more and more people on Twitter with .eth in their names, and the news of Heineken buying Beer.eth. As a German, it makes me a little sad that it wasn’t one of our breweries buying it.The first thing I did after that news broke was, searching how much other beverage ENS addresses would cost.Water being less expensive than coke indeed is good news for Nestle, but so far, they haven’t bought it.But let’s take a step back. What are these ENS domains anyway, and why would people (& companies) buy them?Let’s talk about domains first.Suppose you’re a tech-enthusiast (aka not much clue of reading backend code or of IT networking infrastructure) like me. In that case, you might never really think about how it’s possible that we can google stuff and be shown things in a human-readable manner.When going to a website, all we do is enter its domain name in our browser, and voila. But in the backend, the Domain Name System is hard at work.What is DNS?The internet is…