KNS Domain Auction Schedule and Details

Klaytn Name Service
7 min readMar 14, 2022

Read this post in: 한국어

Greetings from the KNS team. In this article, we will guide you with the schedule and details of the KNS Domain Auction.

TL;DR

  • The domain auction will be held for two weeks, from Monday, March 28th to Sunday, April 10th.
  • It will be held as a Vickrey auction where the highest bidder will win at the price of the second-highest bid.
  • The earlier you bid and win, and the higher the winning bid price you have, the more $KNS token airdrop you will get.

KNS Domain Auction will be held as a Vickrey Auction using decentralized blockchain transactions and will be consisted of three stages: 1) bid, 2) reveal, and 3) finalization.

Here’s a sneak-peak of the auction website:

[Fig1] Sample landing page for KNS Domain Auction

Table of Contents

  1. Bid
    1.1. Overview
    1.2. System
  2. Reveal
  3. Finalization
  4. Domains
  5. $KNS Token Airdrop
  6. FAQ

1. Bidding

1.1. Overview

a) Bid Period: 06:00 UTC, March 28th (Monday) to 14:59 UTC, April 10th (Sunday)

  • Latest updates will be announced later on via Discord and Twitter
  • Anyone can participate in our auction.

b) Open for Bid: 3-to-6 letter .klay domains, in lowercase alphabets and numbers

  • Example: as.klay (X), doge.klay (O), surfing.klay (X)
  • Domains longer than 6 letters or not taken in the auction will be sold through a designated period after the auction.

c) Minimum Bid: 50 KLAY

  • Upon completion of the bid transaction, the bid amount is transferred to a contract and deposited until the reveal or delivery of the domain depending on the result.

d) Supported Wallet: Kaikas Wallet

  • We’ve decided to support the Kaikas Wallet only to minimize technical issues.

e) $KNS Token Airdrop: The earlier you bid and win, the more $KNS token airdrop you will get. (Refer below)

[Fig2] Sample bid page for KNS Domain Auction

1.2. System

a) How to Bid: Send a bid transaction for a domain through the KNS Auction Website (currently under construction)

  • Anyone can bid on any 3~6-letter-domain as many times as they want to.
  • The price of each bid is disclosed, but the domain information will be encrypted and sealed until the reveal, and not even the KNS team will be able to access it.

b) Secret Phrase: You need to download a secret phrase before sending the transaction so that domain information will be encrypted.

  • After the end of the bidding period, you MUST reveal your domain information BY YOURSELF through the website during the reveal period.
  • If you lose the secret phrase, you will NOT be able to reveal your bid! The bid amount will be confiscated, and a portion of it will be sent to $KNS Treasury for the benefit of $KNS token holders.
  • To prevent losing the secret phrase, the website is designed so that you will not be able to proceed before downloading the secret phrase.
  • The secret phrase is unique for each bid, hence you will have secret phrases as many as the number of bids you placed.

c) Cancel Bid: Available during bidding period through the website

  • The secret phrase is required to cancel a bid. As said, without it, you cannot also reveal your bid.
  • To prevent abusing, 1% of the bid amount will be charged as a cancellation fee.

2. Reveal

a) Reveal Period: 15:00 UTC, April 10th (Sunday) to 14:59 UTC, April 17th (Sunday)

b) Purpose of Reveal: The process of disclosing which domain the bidder has placed the bid on since it was sealed and encrypted

c) How to Reveal: Enter the secret phrase in the dashboard menu

d) Bid Result

  • If a bid is NOT revealed, its bid amount will be confiscated, and a portion of it will be sent to $KNS Treasury for the benefit of $KNS token holders.
  • If you are NOT the highest bidder upon your reveal, your bid amount will be fully refunded immediately.
  • If you ARE the highest bidder upon your reveal, your bid amount will be deposited until the delivery of the domain, as long as it remains as the highest bid.
  • If you are NOT the highest bidder due to someone else’s reveal, your bid amount will be fully refunded immediately.
[Fig3] Sample case of how the winner is decided

3. Finalization

a) Winner: Highest bidder after the reveal

b) Winning Bid Price: Second-highest bid after the reveal

  • Example: John and Jane are the only bidders for doge.klay and they have bid 500 KLAY and 300 KLAY respectively. In this case, John wins doge.klay for 300 KLAY.
  • Jane’s bid amount will be fully refunded immediately after John’s bid is revealed.
  • John’s 200 KLAY will be refunded on the same day of the delivery of doge.klay.

c) Special Situations

  • Only One Bidder: The bidder will win the domain for 50 KLAY regardless of the bid amount.
  • Multiple Bidders for the Highest Bid: The first bidder with the highest bid will win at the highest bid price.

d) Expected Date of Delivery for Domains: April 30th

  • Token Format: NFT (KIP-17)
  • The winner’s [bid amount — winning bid price] will be refunded at the same time.

4. Domains

a) Market Place Listing: May (To be announced, expecting Open Sea)

b) Validity of the Delivered Domains: June 30th, 2023 (1 year and 2 months)

  • The domains must be renewed yearly to maintain ownership

c) How to Renew a Domain: Through our v1.0 website (to be launched) until 30 days after the expiration of a domain

  • If NOT renewed, the ownership will be lost and anyone can register the domain

d) Domain Renewal Fees (Per Year)

  • 3 Letters: 500 KLAY
  • 4 Letters: 150 KLAY
  • 5 Letters: 30 KLAY
  • 6 Letters: 20 KLAY
  • 7+ Letters: 10 KLAY
  • The above price will be applied to the registration of domains in regular sales after the auction
[Fig4] Each domain has a unique identity!

c) Integration: We are talking with different services under an official partnership with Krust

  • Wallets: Send KLAY and tokens to .klay domains without entering a wallet address
  • Block Explorers: Lookup a wallet address using a .klay address, vice versa.
  • Metaverse/Game-fi: Use .klay domains as your identity within the projects/games

5. $KNS Token Airdrop

a) Eligibility: Anyone who wins a domain in the auction

  • The only public allocation for $KNS tokens is airdrop for auction winners (No IDO)
  • No airdrop for acquiring domains after the auction

b) Amount of Airdrop: Bidding date and winning bid price will be put into the following equation:

[Fig5] The equation for $KNS token airdrop
  • y = Amount of airdrop
  • k, a, m = Constants in tokenomics (TBD)
  • x = (Last day of bidding period+1)-date of bidding: The earlier you bid and win, the more airdrop you get. The bidder of the first day will get 2~4x more airdrop than the bidder of the last day. 15:00 UTC will be considered as the base time for a date change.
[Fig6] A sample graph when assuming the bidder of the first day gets 4x airdrop than the bidder of the last day (x-axis = bidding date, y-axis = amount of airdrop)
  • z = Winning bid price: The higher the winning bid price you have, the more airdrop you get. Compared to winning a bid for 100 KLAY, winning a bid for 200 KLAY will get around 3x airdrop, NOT 2x.
[Fig7] A sample graph when assuming a 200 KLAY winner gets 3x airdrop compared to a 100 KLAY winner (x-axis = winning bid price, y-axis = amount of airdrop)

c) Announcement of Airdrop Amounts and Tokenomics: May 31st

d) Expected Date of Airdrop: June 30th

e) $KNS Token Functions: Revenue distribution of domain sale and governance

  • Swap, LP pool, staking, and governance functions will be released in the future

6. FAQ

Q. Why should I participate in the auction?

  • You can engrave an identity on Klaytn by owning a domain. Plus, it’s just cool to have one!
  • You can get an airdrop of $KNS tokens by winning a bid. A portion of the revenue from the auction is indirectly compensated to the $KNS token holders.
  • You can expect profits from secondary transactions by acquiring promising domains.
  • Since the minimum bid is 50 KLAY, you might be able to acquire a domain at a lower price than the regular registration prices for 3 and 4 letter domains.

Q. What if I want to change the bid amount after bidding to a certain domain?

  • You will have to cancel the bid and place a bid again. Be aware that 1% of your bid amount will be charged as a cancellation fee.

Q. How will the proceeds of the auction be used?

  • 70% of the revenue will be distributed to the KNS team, and 30% will be used as a treasury for $KNS tokenomics.

Q. What’s the codebase?

Q. When will the domains for giveaway winners be delivered?

  • We are expecting May; After the auction and before the sale of normal domains.

Q. Any helpful resources?

7. Guide on the Website

Read the following post:

Stay Tuned

Don’t miss out on the latest news from KNS. We are best reached by Discord. Giveaways are always ongoing in our Discord server, so we hope you see you there!

Klaytn Name Service (KNS)
Your
.klay domain, your on-chain identity.
Website: klaytn.domains
Twitter: twitter.com/klaytn_domains
Discord: discord.gg/kns

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