Nameserver (NS Record)
A server that answers DNS queries for a domain; its NS records name the authoritative servers.
- glossary
A nameserver is a server that answers DNS queries for a domain, and the NS records at a domain's registry declare which nameservers are authoritative for it. When you point a domain at a DNS host (Cloudflare, Route 53, your registrar's own DNS), you are setting its nameservers; those servers then publish the record types — A, MX, TXT, and the rest — that route traffic and mail.
Related keywords
- nameserver
- NS record
- authoritative server
- DNS delegation
- DNS hosting
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.