Getting started

The Gwei Name Service (GNS) gives you a human-readable name on Ethereum, yourname.gwei, that you can point at your wallet, your website, and your identity across the ecosystem.

Unlike most naming services, GNS is ownerless. The contract has no admin keys, no upgrade mechanism, and no company behind it. Registration fees are burned, not collected. Once you register a name, the only rules that apply to it are the immutable ones written into the contract, which anyone can read on Etherscan.

What you need

  • A wallet. MetaMask, Rabby, or any wallet that supports WalletConnect.
  • A little ETH on Ethereum Mainnet. Most names (5+ characters) cost 0.0005 ETH per year, plus gas for two transactions.
  • Two minutes. Registration is a two-step process with a 60-second wait in the middle, which protects you from front-running.

Register your first name

  1. Go to Register and search for the name you want.
  2. If it is available, review the price and press Start registration. Your wallet sends a sealed commitment, so nobody can see which name you picked.
  3. Wait sixty seconds. Do not close the tab if you can help it, but if you do, the site remembers your in-progress registration and lets you resume from where you left off.
  4. Press Complete registration and confirm the second transaction with the fee.
  5. Done. The name is minted to your wallet as an ERC-721 token. Find it under My domains.

After registering

From My domains you can open any name you own and:

  • Point it somewhere: set the address it resolves to.
  • Make it your display name: set it as your primary name for reverse resolution.
  • Give it a face: store an avatar image directly onchain.
  • Set up a website: point a contenthash at IPFS content.
  • Create subdomains: free, unlimited, and yours to give away or sell.
  • Renew it any time before the 90-day grace period ends.

Continue with Registration to understand exactly what happens under the hood, or jump to Pricing.