The global tag graph is fragmented and siloed. Tagging infrastructure is redundant. Developer hours are duplicated and wasted. Social media giants prefer it this way.

Ethereum Tag Service (ETS) addresses this fundamental flaw in current web tagging systems by unifying fragmented tagging under a universal, blockchain-based protocol. Similar to ENS, except for tagging, ETS takes an innovative approach to provenance, attribution, and ownership in tagging, ensuring a verifiable, decentralized tag graph. How does that work?

To achieve this, ETS employs a novel design whereby tags, content tagging & tagging data graphs are treated as composable units & services.

In ETS, the tags themselves are ERC-721 non-fungible tokens.  An ETS tag may be reused across many tagging records by any participant of the system. This enables many-to-many data relationships with the tokenized tag as a linchpin facet of the resulting tag graph. These composable tags, or “CTAGs”, have the potential to become data hubs connecting people, places and things across Web 3.

The writing of tagging records also differs from ENS. Whereas the owner of the namespace controls ENS records, ETS records are recorded in ETS core for the signing tagger via a relayer. Relayers, independently owned smart contracts, spawned from the ETS Relayer Factory contract, are the means by which developers implement ETS in their own system.

Integration with platforms like Farcaster, Lens and Mirror will be key to showcasing ETS's practical application and potential for widespread adoption, enhancing user interaction across decentralized social media.

The operation of the ETS Protocol involves many more details, including ownership of tags and revenue sharing among participants from the fees for creating tagging records.