Curious to see if you qualify for a loan? Can’t remember what crypto or DeFi lenders are out there? There’s a hack for that. Any owner of an Ethereum Name Service (ENS) name can simply type their name into a web browser and add .loan to the end of it. The result (for now) is a fully functioning native web page with options.

LIKE THIS: decashed.eth.loan

The trick to making it work is the domain name eth.loan, one of nearly two dozen domain names that also act as reverse ENS names. Eth.loan works similar to eth.photos in that the server can interpret subdomains as .eth names. From there, many things are possible (see eth.limo for example!).

Currently, the tool shows two options to every visitor. Try your-name-here.eth.loan in a browser and you’ll see both. One of them has an affiliate link attached to it. Check them out if you’d like. Right now the whole concept is more of a prototype.

If you are a DeFi lender or crypto lender that is interested in being listed on this tool, please email sean@debanked.com. Sean Murray is the creator of eth.loan just like eth.photos.

eth.photos, a web-browser-friendly gateway to visualize web3 .eth usernames, recently added some new features. In addition to being able to view recently acquired image-based NFTs, ENS users can now also view:

• Their recently acquired ENS names
• Their IPFS link (if they have an IPFS site listed in the ENS manager
• Recently received bcards (What’s bcard?)
• Activity feed of bpapers created by their bcard network
• Their own most recent bpaper
• The total number of Likes (What’s Likebutton?)

The site does not host any of the displayed data. Instead, it creates a live visual of data from the user’s activity on ethereum and polygon. Sean Murray is the creator of it.

Think the obsession with branded web3 crypto domains is an overhyped fad? Unless your email address is something like 81032840732@email.com, you’ve already bought into the branded address movement, just like everyone else finally did 30 years ago.

In the early days of personal computing, network enthusiasts were assigned a string of numbers to communicate with each other on CompuServe. Randomly assigned and formatted as 7 octal digits, this growing community was ported to the public internet in 1989. Almost overnight, they became reachable from outside their network through an email address linked to their numerical ID such as 7xxxx.xx@compuserve.com.

CompuServe effectively led America’s internet march forward until a rival, America Online, posed a threat. Offering users the option to select a memorable branded name and email address as early as 1992, the AOL branded name concept became ubiquitously known as a “Screen Name.”

CompuServe ignored it, partially because its aging technological infrastructure wasn’t designed to escape the numerical name system. But also because Americans and people the world over still weren’t sure what it was they liked about access to the Information Superhighway. Many critics compared the two on price. But as AOL began to crush CompuServe, CompuServe finally had no choice but to try and make its service more appealing to the public. It began with screen names.

“Finally it has happened!,” an announcement said. “CompuServe users can now forget about hard to remember email addresses with numbers (such as 72223.10@CompuServe.com) and start using ‘normal looking’ email addresses like the rest of the world! … If you’re a CompuServe user, just GO REGISTER to choose your new email address (actually, this is an alias to your current CompuServer email address, so you can use both addresses if you like)… If you’re not a CompuServe user, but frequently send email to CompuServe accounts, you might want to find out what their ‘easy to remember email alias’ is.”

Twenty million American adults had access to the internet that year. America Online would go on to register 35 million subscribers alone by the year 2002, impressing upon an entire generation the value of one’s “screen name.”

Today, almost nobody would ever think to use a string of random digits to identify themselves, yet that is exactly what crypto addresses have accomplished. In the case of ethereum, for example, a randomly assigned string of 42-chars is a hark back to the pre-1996 CompuServe era on steroids.

Perhaps if they were still around, they’d publish a more modern version.

“Finally it has happened! Web3 users can now forget about hard to remember crypto addresss (such as 0x8018asdfdssd809128320912428dfakd998) and start using ‘normal looking’ addresses like the rest of the world! … If you’re a Web3 user, just GO REGISTER to choose your new web3 address (actually, this is an alias to your current crypto address, so you can use both addresses if you like).”

Fintech companies looking to tether customers to their platforms long-term will have no choice but to adopt web3 into their strategies. But how to do that? An easy solution would be to take advantage of the subdomain feature of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS).

With ENS, anyone can create subdomains of .eth domains that they own. It costs gas but the process is simple, simple enough that fintech companies may have an interest in offering a variety of custom ENS names for their customers to choose from.

And if they are successful in getting a customer attached to that name, well then that customer’s entire individual web3 identity will potentially live on the fintech company’s platform. In doing this, it may be smart to offer subdomains of a variety of top-level .eths, even if the branding is unrelated to the fintech company.

Imagine, for example, that a fintech company offered new customers the option to choose any username they want attached from the following options.

• username.fntc.eth
• username.rocknroll.eth
• username.sofun.eth
• username.blue.eth

A company that tires of its relationship with the fintech company might not feel compelled to change their web3 identity if perhaps rocknroll.eth is the domain their account is registered under. And thus the customer remains connected to the original fintech who controls that subdomain.