3DNS is changing how we use domain names by bringing them onchain, and we are leveraging Optimism to do it. Let’s talk about why we picked them and what it means to be building in the OP ecosystem:

What's Different About Onchain Domains?

Domain names have historically been managed through centralized registrars and are just human readable abstractions for IP address for websites. But with 3DNS domains are stored onchain, bringing several advantages. First, domains with 3DNS are secured and managed by your private keys, much like how you'd manage cryptocurrency in your wallet. This makes your domain more secure and interoperable within web3. With 3DNS, since your domain also functions as an identifier like ENS, you can receive cryptocurrency payments directly to your domain and use it as your web3 usernames. 3DNS has feature parity in both the web2 ICANN compliant domain world with registrars like GoDaddy, and the web3 identifier world with providers like ENS.

Optimism and Their Vision

Optimism is a Layer 2 technology that works on top of Ethereum to scale its capacity — it's faster and costs less to use. Optimism achieves this by using Optimistic Rollups to increase transaction throughput and reduce fees by batching transactions to Ethereum. Over the last two years, Optimism saved users $2.69 billion in gas fees and significantly reduced finality for transactions, all while securing over $2.8 billion in value. Building on this success, Optimism is now focused on empowering thousands of blockchain networks that scales a more equitable internet — ensuring no single entity controls it — through the Optimism Collective.

At the heart of the Optimism Collective lies a novel governance paradigm: impact equals profit. This principle unites communities, companies, and citizens in a symbiotic ecosystem, ensuring that contributing to the collective good directly enhances individual prosperity

The Power of Optimism's Technology

As mentioned above, Optimism uses Optimistic Rollups where transactions are assumed to be valid by default and only run through state proofs in the event of a dispute, significantly enhancing throughput and efficiency by leveraging fraud proofs to maintain security and integrity of the state. Optimistic rollups enable Ethereum to scale by offloading transaction execution to a secondary layer (i.e. L2, Optimism), thereby reducing the computational load on the main chain, which allows for increased transaction throughput and reduced costs due to the economic use of on-chain resources and the deferred verification mechanism that concentrates the validation effort on disputed transactions only.

Optimism maintains Layer 1 security via fraud proofs, allowing challenges to invalid transactions, ensuring assets the L2 are secured by Ethereum.

The Vision of an Accessible Web

In contemplating the future of onchain domains, our primary goal was to significantly improve the user experience. Achieving this meant eliminating prohibitive costs for users. We aimed for near-zero transaction fees so that tasks like setting up a website wouldn't burden users with high fees exceeding $10 like they would on the L1. This also means gas fees to register and manage domains are a few cents.

Because 3DNS domains function both as real web domains and as web3 identifiers, you can manage both from the low costs of the L2 — learn more on our blog post on how to manage an ENS name from an L2 with 3DNS here.

Enter the Superchain

The Optimism Superchain, or OP Stack, is a modular, open-source stack designed for Ethereum scaling, employing a collection of interoperable protocols and tooling that facilitate the creation and operation of highly scalable, secure, and decentralized protocols by abstracting complex layer 2 solutions into more accessible, standardized components.

This collaborative model accelerates improvement across all networks and incentivizes the development of public goods through a unique funding mechanism called Retroactive Funding. This funding model rewards efforts that benefit the whole Superchain ecosystem. With 3DNS embracing Optimism and its Superchain architecture, the focus is on creating a scalable, secure, and collaborative ecosystem for onchain domain management and beyond. With Optimism, 3DNS to leverages benefits provided by the OP stack, making the management of onchain domains more accessible. With EIP-4844 going live on Ethereum mainnet, this further improves affordability.

The Superchain, a network of multiple Layer 2 chains (OP Chains) that share security measures and the underlying OP Stack. This collaborative model accelerates improvement across all networks and incentivizes the development of public goods through a unique funding mechanism called Retroactive Funding. This funding model rewards efforts that benefit the whole Superchain ecosystem. With 3DNS embracing Optimism and its Superchain architecture, the focus is on creating a scalable, secure, and collaborative ecosystem for onchain domain management and beyond. With Optimism, 3DNS to leverages benefits provided by the OP stack, making the management of onchain domains more accessible. With EIP-4844 going live on Ethereum mainnet, this further improves affordability.

Conclusion

Our goal is to make the user experience the best possible. By choosing Optimism, 3DNS is doing just that, making onchain domains cheaper and easier to use on a faster, scalable Ethereum network. For onchain domains, where actions like updating or transferring domains need to be both affordable and quick, this is especially important. We’re excited to be building the future of domains on Optimism.