DNS Propagation
The delay before a DNS change is seen everywhere, as cached old records expire across resolvers.
- glossary
DNS propagation is the lag between making a DNS change and that change being visible everywhere on the internet. It happens because resolvers around the world cache the old answer until its TTL expires, so a new record or nameserver update rolls out gradually rather than instantly — anywhere from minutes to a couple of days. There is no global "DNS" to update at once; propagation is just caches timing out. The practical fix is to lower the TTL ahead of a planned change.
Related keywords
- DNS propagation
- DNS update delay
- TTL
- DNS cache
- nameserver change
Contributors
Namefi is a collective of engineers, designers, and operators who obsess over building tools that make managing your onchain domain names effortless.
Victor Zhou is a technology founder and standards editor focused on digital identity and trust. He founded Namefi, edits Ethereum Improvement Proposals, and previously led smart-contract architecture work at Google Labs.
His work sits at the intersection of naming, ownership, and the systems people use to establish identity online. That perspective makes him especially interested in the way names move between personal meaning, public recognition, and digital infrastructure.
For Namefi, Victor edits and writes about domains as durable digital identity: how names become ownable onchain assets, how tokenization changes custody and trust, and what naming can learn from the systems people use to establish identity online.