Introduction

The Concordium Name Service (CNS) is a distributed and extensible naming system based on the Concordium blockchain. CNS has similar goals to DNS, the Internet's Domain Name Service, but with significantly difference in architecture due to the capabilities and constraints provided by the Concordium blockchain. CNS operates on a system of dot-separated hierarchical names called domains, with the owner of a domain having full control over subdomains.

Crypto addresses are public keys made of complex hexadecimal strings. They are not intuitive for humans to read or memorize, especially non-savvy blockchain users. This contributes to a few difficulties interacting with the blockchain including the time wasted in copying off wallet addresses, as well as costly errors of sending funds to the wrong addresses.

However, the goal of innovation on the blockchain is to improve the ease of usage and accessibility of digital and non-digital transactional products, and with the Concordium Network's resolve to build an ecosystem with possible future regulations in mind, we are excited to be able to onboard and work with a community of real world users on Concordium. This is why we are building the Concordium Name Service (CNS), to tackle the problem by allowing users to own and use human-readable, domain-like addresses instead of the regular, machine-readable Hexadecimal addresses.

Simply put, CNS's job is to map human-readable names like 'Lars.cns' to machine-readable identifiers such as Concordium addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata. This is similar to how DNS translates domain names to IP addresses so browsers can load Internet resources. CNS also supports 'reverse resolution', making it possible to associate metadata such as canonical names or interface descriptions with Concordium addresses.

The Concordium Name Service is a novel solution that will continue to see application across future projects and wallets on the Concordium ecosystem. This is because it provides an easier, memorable way to transact value across the network.

• Each Domain name on CNS will be using the Concordium CIS-1 token standard as proof of ownership.

• As a CIS-1 token, each domain serves beyond existing as an NFT. CNS domain names will be able to store information such as web contents, images, links, as well as crypto wallet addresses.

• CNS integrates crypto addresses to a decentralized domain while preserving your privacy. Completely owned and controlled by you.

• CNS to include several complex contracts for registry, identifiers, storage, control, resolution, etc.

• CNS hierarchal nature allows domain owners to setup subdomains for themselves as they wish. This means that for someone with a groot.CNS domain, they can create and configure a pay.groot.CNS for whatever purposes.

• There are no size restrictions with Domains/Subdomains.

• There is no limit to the amount of domain names a user can own. Any user can own as many domain names as they want.

• Registering a new domain name is instant and immediate.

• CNS uses a subscription-based model. This means that domain owners will have to renew registration for each year to keep their domains.

• Registering a new domain name includes a base domain price and a negligible amount of CCD for gas. The domain fee is priced in based on the length of the domain name.

• Special characters and Unicode are accepted on CNS. These include emojis and characters from special keyboards and languages apart from the English language.

• Special characters such as #, , /, ?, ., ) are not supported.