Domain registrar company EnCirca has announced that it is accepting pre-registration applications for the Ethereum website extension, “.ETH.” EnCirca said that it will be accepting applications until August 10, in a press release on July 18. EnCirca also said that they were the first registrar approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to accept applications for Ethereum domain websites. According to its website, ICANN is a not-for-profit public-benefit group that serves to coordinate and develop policy for Internet naming conventions. According to the press release, EnCirca was motivated to start including blockchain-related extensions in its registrar …

Put the word "blockchain" together with the acronym "DNS" and what do you get? Just like that 1980s commercial in which chocolate collides with peanut butter, you get a result that's really quite remarkable — blockchain-based domain names. This new hybrid could change the way the system works in important ways. The term "blockchain" refers to the underlying technology that powers Bitcoin, a distributed data store that achieves a state of consensus. Every node on the network will agree about the historical facts, with minimal reliance on trusting central authorities. The Domain Name System (DNS) is used every time you …