Introducing .luxe on ENS
Minds & Machines, the owner of the .luxe TLD (top-level domain) recently announced that they will be opening registrations for .luxe with built-in integration with ENS. This is the culmination of a partnership between myself and Minds & Machines that we’ve been working on behind the scenes for nearly a year now, and we’re delighted to be able to launch it. Integrating directly with ENS means that .luxe is the first top-leveldomain that is natively “ENS enabled”.
What does it mean to be “ENS Enabled”?
Direct integration with ENS means that any owner of a .luxe domain can instantly associate it with an Ethereum account via their registrar. That accounnt then fully controls the name inside ENS.
Once configured, the name can be used like any other ENS name (which until recently meant only .eth names) — you can associate names with wallets and contracts, use it to reference distributed content on IPFS and Swarm, and even use it to name your cryptokitties. You can also create subdomains, with all the same capabilities as the main domain.
In addition to all of that, you can use the .luxe name like you would any other DNS domain — use it for email, a website, and so forth.
How is this different from ENS’s support for other top-level domains?
ENS recently launched initial support for importing DNS domains into ENS via DNSSEC, with .xyz as the first trial TLD.
Unlike the integration with .luxe, the DNSSEC integration is “permissionless”. This means that it operates entirely using public mechanisms such as DNSSEC, and uses smart contracts to prove ownership of the DNS domain before letting the user claim it in ENS.
This means that the process is somewhat more manual: Users have to configure DNSSEC on their domain, create a specially formatted TXT record, and go through a proof process to claim the domain. EasyDNS has lead the way in making this simpler by automating the process, but this is only possible if you both register and host your DNS services with them, which will not be practical for everyone.
When can I register a .luxe domain?
Minds & Machines have announced a launch schedule, which includes a special early-access period for owners of .eth domains on ENS. If you own a .eth domain, you will have a priority registration opportunity for the corresponding .luxe domain during a special pre-registration period before anyone else can register domains. The period is from the 9th to the 25th of October at 4:00PM UTC, and applies to all ENS domains registered before the 28th of September 2018. General availability, for any name still available in .luxe, starts on November 6, after which anyone can register the previously reserved names.
A list of supporting registrars is available here.