What is ION Domains

ION DNS is a service that allows users to assign a human-readable name to crypto wallets, smart contracts, and websites. With ION DNS, access to decentralized services is analogous to access to websites on the internet.

Your nickname on a decentralized network

You can create an account on social media and some messenger apps by registering a username, enabling others to find you more easily.

Now you can register a domain name on the ION blockchain and assign it to your crypto wallet — this becomes your nickname inside the ION ecosystem, usable in place of a long wallet address.

In addition to users registering domain names, developers can also register domain names for the smart contracts of their decentralized services. Now, smart contracts will also have their own nicknames, just like bots in messenger apps.

.ion domain names are NFTs

The domain zone for ION DNS is called “.ion”. Users register their domain name like this: “alice.ion”. “.ion” domain names are NFTs.

That means that once you obtain a domain name, you’ll be able to store, gift, or sell it — the same way you’d handle regular NFTs.

Rules for .ion domain names

The “.ion” domain name must be at least 4 characters and no more than 126 characters. Registering a domain name with fewer than 4 characters is unavailable to avoid confusion with well-known internet domain names, such as “com”, “org”, “gov”, etc.

The domain must contain English letters, digits, and hyphen.

However, technically, a domain name could depict an emoji, but they’re unavailable because a lot of them look the same — e.g., 😗 and 😙 — which scammers would use to trick unsuspecting users easily.

Once per year, the domain owner has to send 0.075 ICE to the domain’s smart contract to extend the domain for one more year. If the owner fails to extend their domain, it goes back to the auction — this prevents domains from being lost forever if the owner loses access.

Decentralization

ION DNS is a decentralized domain name system. There is no “administrator” who can block your domain name.

For exceptional cases, it is possible to change the owner or delete the domain by means of network-wide voting. Note that the network majority can change not only DNS, but also any configuration of the blockchain — but since there are many independent validators on the network, such changes need an exceptionally good reason.

Auction rules

• For previously unowned domains the initial auction starts at one week and gradually shortens to one hour over the first 12 months after launch. For expired domains, the auction always lasts one week.
• All users can place bids in ICE to win a domain name.
• If a bid is placed with less than an hour left in the auction, it is extended by one hour so other users can place counter-bids.
• Every new bid must be at least 5% higher than the previous one.
• When the auction closes, the user who placed the highest bid gets the domain.
• For details, see the smart contract source.

Developers

Each domain can store up to 2^256 DNS records where you can keep not only wallet addresses and websites but anything you want.

You can use this in your products.

A domain can be assigned an arbitrary smart contract responsible for managing subdomains. It can implement any functionality that can be used to create new mechanics.

We welcome auxiliary services that could simplify user participation in auctions — for example, so users don’t have to wake up early in the morning if the auction is held at an inconvenient time. Such services could collect a small commission fee in ICE for their work.