ENS Developers Temporarily Suspended Auction Due to Errors Discovered

The developers of the Ethereum Domain Name System (ENS), which allows converting the hexadecimal wallet address into a unique domain name, discovered two errors in the code and temporarily suspended the auction.

The first auction of 3-6-character .eth names ended on OpenSea on September 29th. However, in certain cases, unique domain names were awarded to the wrong participants and their cost was lower than the highest bid for this name. The developers found two errors in the code, which is why they temporarily suspended the auction.

First, some users were provided with incorrect information on how to bet using the JavaScript SDK. As a result, their applications were not taken into account when determining the winner of the auction. OpenSea reports that it will contact affected users and provide them with instructions for placing the correct applications.

The second error allowed one of the users to obtain particularly valuable addresses by sending applications for registration of other domain names. Prior to the suspension of the auction, he managed to take over such addresses as defi.eth, wallet.eth, apple.eth and others. At the same time, the auction results cannot be canceled.

“We managed to detect the error at the moment when he had already seized 16 addresses. Unfortunately, ENS is designed in such a way that we cannot roll back the results. This is done specifically so that .eth name holders have a higher level of security. As we see, this approach carries certain risks, ”the developers said.

ENS is “an automated registry that allows anyone who wants to register a domain name ending in .eth through an auction.” The identifiers foundation.eth and exchange.eth were purchased immediately after the launch of ENS in 2017 for $ 27,000 and $ 609,000, respectively. How much the user paid for acquiring addresses using a bug is unknown.

At the moment, the causes of errors have already been detected and eliminated. The developers apologize for the situation. “We are very sorry that such a problem arose. We take the integrity of auctions and the entire ENS system seriously. From now on, we will not complete the auctions until we make sure that all problems are fixed. ”