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TTL (Time to Live)

How long, in seconds, a DNS record may be cached by resolvers before it must be looked up again.

NTNamefi TeamAuthorVZVictor ZhouEditorJune 22, 2026
  • glossary

TTL (time to live) is a value, in seconds, attached to every DNS record that tells resolvers how long they may cache the answer before checking again. A short TTL (say 300 seconds) means changes take effect quickly but generates more lookups; a long TTL (86,400 seconds = one day) is efficient but means an update lingers in caches. Lowering the TTL a day before you plan a change is the standard trick for fast DNS propagation.

Related keywords

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Contributors

Namefi Team

Namefi Team • Namefi
Author

Namefi is a collective of engineers, designers, and operators who obsess over building tools that make managing your onchain domain names effortless.

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Victor Zhou

Founder & Standards Editor • Namefi
Editor

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.

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