Coinbase has updated its wallet with a feature that allows users to send cryptokurrency through user names instead of the usual long addresses.
As announced on February 25th, Coinbase wallet now allows its users to send crypto to dedicated user names or names created in the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). Coinbase's own user names look like @username, while ENS names resemble URLs like coinbase.eth.
In its message, Coinabse claims that its users often complain about "how tedious it is to deal with long and meaningless crypto addresses". Many users often fear incorrect copying and pasting of addresses and loss of funds.
The ENS is an intelligent, contract-based, distributed naming system, Ethereum, which assigns human-readable names to addresses in cryptokurrency wallets. Initially, the system only allowed for ethernet addresses, but in October 2019 it introduced support for many connections.
ENS was launched in early May 2017. Names are sold to Ether (ETH) users via intelligent, contract-managed on-chain auctions. In the early days of the ENS, there was a lot of speculation from users who bought the desired names in the hope that they could later sell them profitably.
