If you have been following Kenneth on twitter, you may have been able to guess what our dApp competition entry may have been. This is our official announcement post of the all-new VeChain Naming Service (VNS). Inspired by existing Domain Name Systems (DNS), VNS is compatible with VIP-181 and built to help grow the VeChain ecosystem.

Why build VNS?

We believe that blockchain technology still has quite a way to go in terms of user experience. VeChain has recognized this and has numerous features such as MTT and MPP that can be used to improve the end-user experience. We see the VNS system as another tool developers can use to improve their user’s experience. By converting a 42 character 0x address to a human-readable format such as ‘oliver.vet’ or ‘@oliver’, dApps can greatly reduce the number of new concepts their users will need to learn — helping improve the user onboarding process.

The first version of VNS is very experimental and designed to be a proof of concept for how a more mature naming service may work on-top of VeChain. Version 1 has a focus on simplicity and should allow community developers to easily integrate and start using VNS. We hope to solidify VNS as a new standard within the community as we work towards a more robust version of the system.

How does VNS work?

VNS domains can be acquired through an on-chain blind auction. Users will need to send a shielded version of their bid, along with a good behaviour bond, to the VNS smart-contract. Their bid will then be written to the VeChain blockchain. Once the bidding period has ended, users will need to reveal their bids in order to claim the domain or a refund if they were not the highest bidder.

User’s who win their auction will have their bid and good behaviour bond attached to their domain’s bond. A domain’s bond is used to pay renewal fees and is returned if the domain is de-registered.

VNS Version 1 Settings

Bidding window: 3 days

Users have 3 days to enter their bids for a domain before the bidding window will close and users will be required to finalize the bidding stage and begin revealing their bids.

Reveal window: 1 day

Users will have 1 day to reveal their bids and determine the winner of the auction. This results in a total time of roughly 4 days from auction start to domain registration. The highest bidder receives the domain and their bid is attached to the domain as a bond. This bond can be retrieved if the domain is de-registered.

Good behaviour bond: 5,000 VET

Users are required to attach 5,000 VET as a behaviour bond to incentivize them to reveal their bids. The good behaviour bond is attached to the users refund if they are unsuccessful or attached to their domain’s bond if they win the auction.

Yearly domain cost: 1,000 VET

This yearly cost is deducted from the domain’s bond, it increases the costs for domain squatters, while also providing a mechanism for recovering inactive domains.

Invalid domain bounty: 10%

If a user registers a domain that is too short (<4 for X-Nodes and <7 for regular users), 10% of their bond will be given to the user that tells the smart-contract to check and invalidate their name.

Contract migration window: 400 days

Version 1 has a built-in wind-down function that cannot be called for the first 400 days of its existence. The plan is that the community will have migrated to V2 long before this window expires. Once V2 is launched, users will have a deadline to transfer their domains if they want to guarantee their continued ownership.

The Future for VNS

We plan to integrate VNS names into Vexchange in the near future as an example use-case. We also look forward to working with ecosystem projects to improve VNS and integrate VNS into their projects. We truly believe that if the various VeChain projects work together we can build a strong ecosystem that will generate significant value for its users.

As VNS names are VIP-181 compliant, we can see a Valkyrie based exchange service opening up in the near future to enable users to trade their domains for various VIP-180 currencies.

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