The ENS Airdrop is Here: Why It's Important and How To Claim Your Tokens

An Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain is equal to a DNS domain but offers a decentralized and secure way to map your name to your Ethereum wallet address. ENS domains end in .eth and can be bought, sold, and traded on the Ethereum blockchain. For more info, read up here.

If you own a .eth domain, you have the ability to deploy smart contracts that let you set up your own subdomains to correspond with a Dapp to make it user-friendly. ENS launched on May 4th, 2017 and each domain has to contain at least 7 or more characters.

The $ENS token is an important step in further decentralizing the governance of the ENS protocol. The $ENS token empowers the community members to guide its development, community treasury, and technical framework.

At 7pm ET Nov 8, 2021 the ENS governance token $ENS launches and the token claim site opens up to start claiming your tokens. If you owned an ENS domain on or before October 31, 2021 when the snapshot was taken, you are eligible to claim $ENS tokens based on the formula calculated on the history of your wallet address. Here’s what’s included in the formula:

• Age of .ETH address
• Expiry dates (longer registrations get more $ENS) 
• Owners who have set their Primary ENS, formerly called the Reverse Record, get a 2x multiplier

Based on these factors, $ENS tokens will be distributed to all .eth holders wallet addresses. Keep in mind that the distribution is per wallet holder, not per ENS name. There will be a total of 100 million total $ENS tokens, and the distribution is as follows:

1. 25% airdrop to .ETH holders (>137k accounts) 
2. 25% to ENS contributors (>100 individuals and groups, plus hundreds of Discord users) 
3. 50% to the DAO community treasury

If you own a .eth address and you’re eligible to claim $ENS tokens, follow these steps to claim your $ENS tokens:

1. Go to https://claim.ens.domains/
   
2. Connect your wallet
   
3. Select Start Your Claim Process
   
4. Review the ENS info, then click Next
   
5. Constitutional Vote - Help shape the community by voting off-chain on an initial set of guidelines using Snapshot (you may vote for or against the guidelines). Once you have finished voting, submit your votes by confirming with your wallet.
   
6. Choose a delegate - select a community member to represent you, keep in mind you can change who represents you at any time.
   
   • You can choose from a delegate applicant
   • You can select a delegate not listed by entering their .eth address
   • You can delegate the voting power to yourself by entering your own ENS name
     
7. Review your claim amount and delegate choice, then select Claim. This transaction is onchain so it will require that you pay the gas fee to submit the transaction.
   

NOTE: The claim website is open until May 4th, 2022 so you can claim at any point between now and then. If you would like to wait for the gas fees to decrease, you can wait up until May.

If you don't own your own ENS domain, you can purchase your .eth name on ens.domains, however, you won't be eligible for the token drop since the snapshot of ENS and wallet addresses were taken October 31, 2021, for determining the token distribution.

If you would like to purchase your own $ENS tokens, Coinbase will soon be offering $ENS tokens for trade on their platform.

Stay tuned and make sure to follow @ens.eth on Twitter for updates.