Meet The Sui Name Service
We are excited to introduce you to the Sui Name Service (SuiNS)! SuiNS is being built as a open, distributed naming service on the Sui blockchain. Our first product will be the .sui domain name extension which allows our users to start building their on-chain identity on Sui. Our goal is to build a fair and distributed name service that gives equal access to all and provides a unique experience.
To start, SuiNS has closed our pre-seed funding round with participation from Mysten Labs. We are extremely excited to have the opportunity to work with some of the best teams in Blockchain and the immense responsibility we have been given by our investors. The SuiNS team will be releasing the first MVP of our decentralized application in early November with a name registration auction set for Mainnet.
What is a Name Service? Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow…
Name Services were originally built as a way for humans and machines to communicate over a network. Instead of using an IP address (e.g. 127.0.0.1), users could refer to other users on a network with a simple name (e.g. localhost).
The first Name Services were centralized and used for a small number of individuals. In fact, they were so centralized they basically lived as a single file on a personal computer. But as the Internet grew, a new system was built in the 1980s: The Domain Name System (DNS). DNS still lives on today and is what you know as .com, or more recently domains such as .xyz. These technologies require a single group in charge of what names are allowed and what they represent.
Blockchain technology disrupted these systems by allowing Name Services to distribute control and privacy to the community. Being permission-less, these communities are being built by technologists and early adopters with a passion for decentralization.
One of the earliest forks of Bitcoin (aka Altcoin) was actually a Name Service known as Namecoin which had a goal of decentralized control of DNS. However Namecoin was plagued with name squatting and speculation, making the blockchain almost unusable as a Name Service. More recently Ethereum Name Service and Unstoppable Domains have been successful in building a decentralized Name Service, however have had a different focus than what is being built here at SuiNS.
Built different
The SuiNS team doesn’t want to build “just another Name Service” on “just another blockchain”. That’s one of the main reasons we chose Sui. Sui’s object model, move language, processing speeds, and near instant finality allows for new applications and use cases that were never possible.
In our case, we researched existing platforms and found that most services use Domain Names as a catch-all for digital properties. Some may be a website, others a profile, most are adopted as Usernames. SuiNS is building a Name Service that focuses first on our users. We want to build for the next-generation of users that will utilize Blockchain for online gaming.
Identity
.sui > We noticed early on that Name Services on the blockchain were being adopted as Usernames. In SuiNS your .sui name is your identity. It’s what you represent, whether that includes a username, a website, or more. By bringing focus we can add utility to the .sui name that will delight our users. This includes:
- Never having to manage multiple usernames
- Never having to memorize complex passwords
- AND never having to worry about your assets > just jump in the game (with ALL your gear) and be ready to kick some butt!
Further integration with your favorite services (Wallets, NFT Marketplaces) gives users a simple way to track their assets while removing the anxiety of losing money because you fat-finger in a complicated wallet address.
Objects
.move > Keeping with our focus: we felt that the same simplification for Users and wallet addresses made a whole bunch of sense for Objects on Sui. Objects on Sui can now be identified by a simple .move extension as opposed to a long and complicated 20 character ObjectID. The same benefits as mentioned above apply: locating and identifying a Object on Sui becomes a whole lot easier. It also gives us the capability to start building a Index of known and commonly used objects. We are hoping to provide value for the developer experience as well and are curious to hear from folks developing on Sui (contact us at: info@SuiNS.io).
Stay tuned for our next article where we tackle our thoughts on Name Registration (and distribution) and start to develop a public forum to gain insight from the community.
If you’d like to keep the conversation going, please join us on Discord
