Introducing Name Bazaar

A peer-to-peer marketplace for the exchange of names registered via the Ethereum Name Service

Today we are thrilled to announce the long awaited public launch of our second marketplace and district, Name Bazaar, to the Ethereum mainnet. Work on Name Bazaar began immediately upon the close of our network fundraiser in August, and this release represents the culmination of many hours of effort from all district0x team members.

At its core, Name Bazaar allows for peer-to-peer, trustless exchange of cryptographic assets on the blockchain in the form of ‘names’, or Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains. It serves as a prototype framework for a vast collection of marketplaces to come to the district0x Network in the future.

How Does it Work?

The ENS system contains a registrar and auction process which allows any Ethereum user to register and acquire a name via auction. However, no resale mechanism is provided, meaning once a name is registered and owned, the owner has no way of trustlessly transferring ownership of the domain on the blockchain through smart contracts.

Name Bazaar provides the ability for any user with a registered ENS name to list their names for sale, generating unique smart contracts that allow transfer of ownership of their names to a new Ethereum address and owner, receiving an ETH payment in return. Likewise, any user with ETH (and soon, any token) looking to acquire ENS names can do so through these contracts. Also, users can request certain names be listed, and track the status of any name on the website.

All of this is done through a familiar auction style interface — if you’ve ever used Ebay, you’re ready to use Name Bazaar. No sign up is required, all that is necessary is an Ethereum address available through the MetaMask or Parity browser extensions.

Selling Names

Any names already registered and owned by a MetaMask or Parity address can be listed for sale on the site through the ‘Create Offering’ page.

When creating an auction, type the name you’d like to sell, the starting price, the ‘Minimum Bid Increase’, and the time you’d like the auction to end. You can also adjust the ‘Time Extension’ slider to allow the auction to continue on for longer in the event any new bids roll in at the last minute.

In addition to the auction feature, sellers can also utilize the ‘Buy Now’ listing type, which is a firm set price to immediately buy the name.

Buying Names

Buying names on Name Bazaar should feel just as familiar as selling. There’s a persistent search bar at the top of the website, no matter what page you’re on. Simply type in a name you’re looking for and you’re off! A more detailed search page is available, where you can filter by a number of parameters such as price, buy now vs. auction, and so on.

Once you’ve found a name you’d like to buy or bid on, click on it for more information. If the offering is a ‘Buy Now’ type, you can immediately pay the listed price to acquire the name. If it’s an ‘Auction’ type, you can enter a winning bid, and watch the name to be notified if you get out bid, or if the auction closes.

If you’re a frequent buyer of a particular type of name, you can even save your search results with the button in the upper right, and come back to them later to check for new listings.

There are loads more features available to play around with in Name Bazaar. If you’d prefer a more detailed step by step overview, check out our video tutorials on our YouTube channel:

All of this information can be found on the How it Works page.

Launch Contest Results

Last week we announced a short contest to help populate the Name Bazaar with names prior to the launch today. We had over 100 submissions from community members ranging from as few as 1 name to lists larger than 1000 names.

The team conducted an internal vote where we each scored our 10 favorite submissions (based subjectively on quantity and quality of names), and from that vote we took the 6 (we added one!) highest scoring contestants and gave them early access to the site in order to begin adding names in anticipation of the launch.

At the time of this launch post, there are a total of 403 unique domains listed on the Name Bazaar from a combination of the team’s private holdings and winners of the competition who listed ahead of time.

Thank you to everyone who submitted an entry for the contest. We were blown away with the support we received and spent the entire weekend laughing at some of the incredible names our community owns.

What’s to Come

The initial feature set we’re launching with is not the end of Name Bazaar’s development. While we will spend the rest of October fixing any issues that arise in the launch period before transitioning to work on d0xInfra and Meme Factory, we do have a few features we will consider developing as demand for them becomes more clear:

Batch offering creation tools

Premium placement/featured listing services

If at any point you discover issues or have specific suggestions while using Name Bazaar, please feel free to open a Github issue in the Name Bazaar repo. By using the issue prioritization dApp, we can allow DNT holders to signal for the most important features to add next.