ETHDNS and ETH.Radio 📻

Meson Network Bridge First and Last Miles for Web3.

What is ETHDNS?

ETHDNS is a way to access information in the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) from DNS.

What is ETH.Radio?

ETH.Radio is ETHDNS for the .eth domain. Because .eth is not a registered DNS top-level domain it is normally inaccessible from DNS, but by appending .radio to the domain the relevant information cam be obtained. For example, a DNS A record request for mydomain.eth.radio would look up the A records in ENS for mydomain.eth.

ETH.Radio is a alternative to ETH.Link released by Meson Network. ETH.Radio allows users and dApp developers to effortlessly access and host static sites built with a combination of IPFS and ENS.

The infrastructure codebase can be found here.

Why do we need ETH.Radio?

Core internet infrastructure is becoming increasingly centralized and as such, several existential threats have emerged that undermine the principles of an decentralized, open and free internet:

Single points of failure
Censorship
Lack of non-commercial infrastructure
Proliferation of proprietary browser extensions which require centralized services (Unstoppable domains, etc…)
The erosion of the “commons” and “public space”
Web 3.0 adoption is still nascent
Most browsers cannot natively access ENS/IPFS

For end users, this means a limited selection of poor quality services that increasingly resemble a cable TV package. Accessing the dWeb can be a frustrating experience if eth.link, eth.limo is unavailable.

For dApp developers, this leads to a limited selection of platforms and services in addition to lost revenue. As an alternative to eth.link for users and dApp developers, any existing eth.link, eth.limo site can be accessed with eth.radio in the same manner.

This is used by eth.radio to create a reverse proxy sitting in front of an IPFS Gateway.

The practical upshot of this is that if a user enters the URL https://meson.eth.radio/ in to their web browser it will return IPFS content based on the information within ENS without any changes required to their system (browser plugins, alternate DNS servers, etc.).

How do I add a content hash to my domain?

Content hashes can be managed at https://manager.ens.domains/

There are also various libraries and CLI tools that can manage content hashes.

How do I add DNS information to my domain?

There are various libraries and CLI tools that can manage DNS information on ENS.

Are domains other than .eth supported?

EthLink only applies to .eth domains, however other domains registered in ENS can be accessed directly when enabled.

Security and Privacy

The ETH.Radio project enforces strong origin isolation policies for all resources by default. Projects accessed through ETH.Radio automatically receive security hardened browser headers and all client data is encrypted with TLSv1.3 (default) or TLSv1.2 using the latest ciphersuites. All log data is fully anonymized, which prevents the ability to uniquely identify any single user.