Add Your Web3-Avatar to Your ENS

If you’ve been part of the ENS ecosystem, whether it’s actively registering domain names or trading them in marketplaces. You’ve undoubtedly seen some domains with artistic images instead of the default “blue” marker when you list them on marketplaces or even just visit users .eth address page. You can showcase your avatar-profile photo, too!

Enter, ENS Avatars (Profile Picts)

ENS avatars allow you to attach an image to your .eth domain address which can be carried across as your default avatar in the metaverse. With the advent of ENS names gaining popularity and acting as your ideal passport across the web3 universe. It’s only natural for users to want to add a certain personalization or flair to their avatars.

The interesting use-case for this is that you can carry over this avatar to any dApps or integrations that you actively use in your activity. Plus there’s the added advantage of creating an even more eye-catching proposition for your marketplace domain listings. After all, why let your excellent domain name drown in the default color schema across marketplaces like OpenSea, X2Y2, and LooksRare.

How Do I Personalize My ENS?

Now, to do this. We’re going to assume that you already own a .eth address, if not. Here’s a short primer on how to get the right domain names for your web3 identity

Once you have your .ETH address, ensure that you’ve set the Primary ENS Name (a reverse record). This designates which of your ENS names represents your Ethereum account in dApps as your username. To do this, go to ENS App, my account and then use the tool on the page to set it as per your preference.

How Do I Upload a Custom Avatar?

While there aren’t many limitations on this, it’s best to ensure you follow two core-guidelines for the best result.
File Type: .PNG (to ensure the best quality)
Dimensions: 3000 x 3000

Once you have an image in mind, all you need to do is head on over to imgur.com and upload your file. Grab the DIRECT LINK (shown in image above) from the dashboard and keep it saved. After this, head on over to the ENS App.

1. Visit your ENS account dashboard.
2. Select the ENS name & click on the ADD/EDIT Record option on the dashboard (as shown above)
3. Copy your Imgur link
4. Paste the Imgur link to the AVATAR field in the ENS dashboard
5. Quick check to ensure you’ve got the right link and pasted in the correct field.
6. Hold. Don’t confirm yet.

While this step allows you to edit and personalize your ENS avatar. It’s also equally important to do this in a cost-effective manner. Since gas-fees are volatile and can keep changing within seconds based on network activity. It’s crucial to ensure that you’ve monitored gas prices so that you can make it economical. For those of you who have multiple domain names, its the best way to ensure that you’re able to get away with lower fees when you make changes to your domain name avatars.

The easiest way to analyze this is to head on over to Etherscan dashboard, scroll down in the transaction actions tab until you find the ENS: Register Domain activity. This will give you an estimated price for your transactions. If the tracker indicates the fee to be high, hold off on making changes to your ENS domain name. Otherwise, head back over to the ENS dashboard.

Once you’re back to the ENS dashboard, double-check the edits you’ve made to the avatar field and click on confirm. You’ll get a pop-up from your wallet asking to sign the transaction and make the relevant changes. If you’re happy with the price, click confirm. This transaction will change your avatar for the chosen ENS domain name. You can then login to your dApps and verify the changes are done.

You Are Next Level

Apart from being able to carry over your avatar to dApps and other integrations. You can also ensure that your domain names stand out by finding suitable images and adding them to your .ETH names.

This will allow you to stand out, showcase better use-cases for your names and generally add a little bit of flair to your domain name listing. Besides, if you’re open to experimenting, you can set different colors to your names to get more eyeballs on your name (I’ve been experimenting with red & white backgrounds).

Good luck on your journey and remember: be deliberate about your decisions, and don’t become someone else’s exit liquidity!