Note: The ENS App and ENS Explorer are both currently on Sepolia testnet. Behaviour and available features may change before mainnet.
A name's records — its addresses, text records, content hash and more — are stored by its resolver, the contract that answers questions about the name. The resolver has its own set of roles controlling who can write those records. These are separate from the name's roles, which control the name itself.
What are resolver roles?
Resolver roles are permissions held on the resolver contract, each granting the right to set a specific type of record. Most names use an instance of the official ENS Permissioned Resolver (audited), which splits record-writing into ten granular permissions. A wallet needs the matching role to change that record.
By default the name's owner holds every resolver role, so you need nothing extra to edit your own records. Resolver roles matter when you want to let another wallet set records without handing over the name.
Where do I find resolver roles?
Resolver roles live on the resolver's own page, not the name's Roles tab:
Open your name and go to the Resolver tab.
Click the resolver's contract address (shown as "owned resolver 0x…").
The resolver's own page opens, with its own left nav: Nodes, Aliases, Roles and History. Open Roles.
The Roles table lists each user against the record permissions they hold, with Admin and Manager columns — the same layout as a name's Roles tab. A resolver with no grants shows No results. For the name page these tabs sit within, see the name page in ENS Explorer, tab by tab.
The record permissions you can grant
The ENS Permissioned Resolver has ten permissions, each grantable at Manager and/or Admin level:
Set Address — set address records.
Set Text — set text records (avatar, socials, and other key–value records).
Set Content Hash — set the content hash (used to point a name at a decentralised website).
Set Pubkey — set the public key record.
Set ABI — set the ABI record.
Set Interface — set interface implementer records.
Set Name — set reverse name records.
Set Alias — set alias mappings (redirect resolution from one name to another).
Clear — clear all versioned records at once.
Upgrade — upgrade the resolver contract.
What do Admin and Manager mean here?
Manager means the wallet can carry out that action — a Set Text manager can edit text records. Admin means the wallet controls who holds that permission: it can grant the role to others or take it away. As with a name's roles, an Admin can grant a permission to itself, so treat both levels as powerful. For how these levels relate to owning the name, see about name ownership: who controls a name.
Granting resolver roles
On the resolver's Roles tab, click Add user, then:
Enter the wallet's name or address. Explorer resolves it and makes the form live.
Choose the scope: Root (all nodes) grants the permissions across every name this resolver serves, or pick a single name to limit the grant to that one.
Tick the permissions to grant, choosing Manager and/or Admin for each.
Click Save. Because this changes the resolver on-chain, Explorer hands the transaction to your wallet to approve — the same stop-at-wallet flow as granting a name's roles.
Granting resolver roles changes the token ID
Updating resolver roles re-mints the name's token, so its token ID changes. Explorer notes this on the name's Token info tab, where a note reads: "The Token ID will change anytime the roles are updated." The name, its owner and its records are unaffected — only the token identifier changes.
The resolver's other tabs
Nodes lists every name this resolver serves — one resolver can serve many names — each marked Active. Aliases redirect resolution from one name to another; most resolvers have none. History shows the resolver's transaction timeline.
How is this different from a name's roles?
A name's Roles tab controls the name itself — renewing it, changing its resolver, managing subnames. One of those roles, Set Resolver, decides which resolver the name points to. Resolver roles are one layer down: they decide who can write records inside that resolver once it is chosen.
In short: Set Resolver swaps the resolver; resolver roles edit the records it holds. For who can manage the name itself, see who can manage my name? Roles in ENS Explorer.