Quick, buy your name before it's gone! I bought www.chrisbell.com a few years ago and chrisbell.eth a few weeks ago. Not everyone in the cryptocurrency space is trying to be completely anonymous and those addresses can be a bit difficult sometimes. Sometimes it's easy to use the QR code, but other times you find yourself copying and pasting long codes and double checking their accuracy. Ethereum to the rescue! MyEtherWallet has a tab at the top called ENS for Ethereum Name Service and it allows you to create a domain name that points to your receiving address. In other words, I can now request that you send me some ETH coins to "chrisbell.eth" instead of my long address. I've tried it and it works wonderfully!
First, search for the name you want. It will tell you that the name is available, owned or for sale. Of course, people are buying multiple names to turn around and post them for sale, so be quick!
It's available! Great, start the auction. The auction stops people from quickly buying a bunch of names without giving others the opportunity to bid on them as well. The auction last for exactly 3 days and your bid is entered at the same time you start the auction. When 3 days pass, everyone that placed a bid must reveal their bid without any fear that someone will then bid higher. The highest bidder pays the SECOND highest bid to own the domain name. If your bid was 1 ETH and the second highest bid was 0.5 ETH you'll win and only pay 0.5 ETH. The final step, once you own the domain, is to set a resolver address. Follow the instructions that MyEtherWallet provides in the ENS section to set the resolver and your name will then point to your ETH address.
It's already owned :( Sorry your out of luck..
It can be purchased through Domain Sales - This is good and bad. Your domain name is available to buy, however it means someone else owns it and put it up for sale. So it probably won't be all that cheap.
Head over to the tab "Domain Sale" and enter the name again. It will quickly tell you that you can buy the domain for a certain amount of money, and in the case of Hank Aaron, you can buy it for 1.1 ETH:
Maybe you want your name for professional purchases in business. Real estate agents, lawyers, song writers, actors and actresses all might request money directly to their domain name account. Others might want something silly or goofy to keep an anonymous profile, and others might want to collect funds for major crises such as hurricanes and natural disasters. "disasterrelief.eth" would allow people to send funds directly to a help line to avoid middlemen and middlewomen. And don't even try it, that's already taken, and it's not for sale either.
Contacting address owners is impossible! Who owns it? Who knows?! I told you that I own chrisbell.eth, so you can follow that to my ETH address and review my entire ETH balance, along with my token balances. I could transfer my coins to another ETH address while using chrisbell.eth for accepting payments, but I'd rather be open and honest in a somewhat anonymous fashion!
Chris Bell - chris@chrisbell.com
Nice to meet everyone!