The first Name Services were centralized and used for a small number of individuals. In fact, they were so centralized they basically lived as a single file on a personal computer. But as the Internet grew, a new system was built in the 1980s: The Domain Name System (DNS). DNS still lives on today and is what you know as .com, or more recently domains such as .xyz. These technologies require a single group in charge of what names are allowed and what they represent.

Blockchain technology disrupted these systems by allowing Name Services to distribute control and privacy to the community. Being permission-less, these communities are being built by technologists and early adopters with a passion for decentralization.

One of the earliest forks of Bitcoin (aka Altcoin) was actually a Name Service known as Namecoin which had a goal of decentralized control of DNS. However Namecoin was plagued with name squatting and speculation, making the blockchain almost unusable as a Name Service. More recently Ethereum Name Service and Unstoppable Domains have been successful in building a decentralized Name Service, however have had a different focus than what is being built here at SuiNS.

The SNS uses a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain to enable the registration and resolution of names. When a user registers a name on the SNS, they are creating a mapping from a human-readable name to an Ethereum address. This mapping is stored on the blockchain, which allows for a decentralized and secure way to look up the Ethereum address associated with a given name.

One of the main benefits of the SNS is that it provides a user-friendly way to interact with Ethereum addresses. Rather than having to remember or copy-paste long, complex Ethereum addresses, users can simply use a human-readable name to send transactions or interact with smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. This can make it easier for users to interact with decentralized applications (dApps) and other Ethereum-based services.