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FAQ

Why are some labels surrounded by question marks?

If a website displays an abbreviated form of an address, such as 0x123456...0987, rolod0x may have no way of knowing for sure what full address that represents. So if you have an entry in your rolod0x address book for a full address matching this abbreviation, rolod0x knows there is a very high probability the site is referring to the same address, but it cannot guarantee that it's definitely the same address.

In this case, to avoid any security issues associated with accidentally misleading you into thinking that the label shown definitely represents the expected address, the label is surrounded with question marks.

You can customize how these labelled abbreviations look in the Display settings.

Why is it called rolod0x?

Rotary business card file

It's a combination of three ideas:

  • A rolodex is a rotating file device which used to be a common way to store business contact information before the digital era.

  • 0x is a prefix used to denote hexadecimal numbers, and in particular it's used as a prefix for all Ethereum addresses.

  • The word "dox" or "d0x" refers to (revealing of) personal information about people online.

Why does web3 need private address books?

Many websites in web3 use long undecipherable blockchain addresses like 0x6B175474E89094C44Da98b954EedeAC495271d0F to refer to wallet accounts or smart contracts. This often creates a miserable experience for users, since they have to pick one of two unsatisfactory options:

  1. attempt to memorise these addresses, which is totally impractical, and also dangerous since it leaves users vulnerable to phishing attacks, or

  2. rely on some kind of public or centralised name service.

But what's wrong with existing name services?

Name services in web3 typically come in two forms:

  1. Public name services, most notably ENS. ENS is an awesome service for labelling public addresses, but it does not work as a private address book since all ENS domains are public to the whole world. Furthermore:

    • It costs gas every time you want to set up a domain.

    • In many cases, websites display raw addresses even when there is a corresponding ENS entry.

  2. Per-site hosted address books

    For example, https://etherscan.io has a "Address Private Name Tags" feature so that when you create an account and log in, you can register private name tags for any addresses you want. Then whenever the site would have previously displayed the raw addresses, it will instead display the private name tags you submitted.

    This feature is also available on similar block explorers such as https://polygonscan.com. However, it has several drawbacks:

    • It requires you to set up a separate address book for each block explorer you use.

    • Even if you do that, it only works on the block explorer site(s), not on any other web3 dApps you might use.

    • These services typically place limits on the amount of data you can submit. For example, Etherscan limits private name tags to 35 characters, and doesn't let you register more than 5000 addresses.

    • It requires you to trust the centralized block explorer services with your private addresses. This is in direct opposition to the web3 values of trust minimization and decentralization!

What's the animal in the logo?

OK, this isn't really a FAQ -- literally no one has asked. But it can be considered as homage to Ethereum's Merge Panda by @icebearhww:

Ethereum Merge Panda