Nicknames is a new service in koinos to be able to have human readable names. It was designed for safe transfers, it's free (no fees or subscriptions), and there is no limit in the number of names you can take.
Safe Transfers
Please take a look to this real history presented by 
Once the transaction is done, there is no way to revert it. The wallet was not able to alert him about the error and the money was lost.
https://www.youtube.com/live/aAGAqMn4CgU?si=o_9VnJ_JSR-vVbEc&t=1872
It's very easy to commit this type of mistakes, even for experienced users like the one presented in the video. How can we improve the system?
Koinos Nicknames has a solution for this! It's very simple: Nicknames can not be similar to each other.
The similarity is measured with the Levenshtein distance. The names must have a distance of at least 3 characters.
Let's say the user "alice" is created. This means that no one can create "alici", "alicê", "alllice", or "aalicee". All of them will be rejected during the creation because by changing 1 or 2 characters we get "alice". At the same time the nicknames cannot use special characters.
But this feature not only prevents spelling errors when making transfers. It also prevents impersonation attacks. Nowadays it's very common to see attacks where the attacker pretends to be legit person just by taking a similar nickname or email. And the victim cannot notice this small difference. With Koinos Nicknames the people will be more secure, because 3 differences in the nickname are very evident. Then they will be able to detect and eliminate this type of attacks.
No fees or subscriptions
I want to bootstrap Koinos as much as possible to be able to reach the popularity of other blockchains like Ethereum, Cosmos, or Solana. The idea is to reduce as much as possible the barriers to come to Koinos and use the blockchain. This is the reason this will be a free service. All names are free and they have no expiration. You can take as many names as you want, and transfer or sell them in a marketplace like Kollection.
Controlled by Koinos Governance
The control of the contract will be fully delegated to Koinos Governance to eliminate central points of failure or hacks. Meaning that all updates will have to be discussed and approved by the community before applying them.
During the first months I will control the contract to be able to apply patches if needed and also to apply the changes required when the new koinos system call is available. After that I will resign to the rights and set the Koinos Governance System as the unique controller.
Is this different from KAP Domains?
Yes. Koinos Nicknames is a name service independent from KAP domains. There will be 2 ways to differenciate the names in order to avoid confusion:
Nicknames start with
@, like@jgaor@andrarchy. Where as KAP Domains start withkap://, likekap://luke.koin.Nicknames cannot end with
.koin. This is a particular rule I added to the contract in order to avoid confusion with the principal domain of KAP domains.
Names reserved from Kap domains
If you already have a name in KAP Domains you will have 2 names reseved in Koinos Nicknames: Your name without .koin and your name plus .koinos.
For example, if you own kap://money.koin, then you will be able to claim @money and @money.koinos in Koinos Nicknames. In this way you will be able to keep your name in both name services 😉
This reservation will be available just in the first month, after that all names will be unlocked. So make sure to take your name.
It's important to mention that not all names are reserved due the rules explained above.
Let's say you own kap://money.koin and another user owns kap://monkey.koin. In this case only one of you will be able to claim the name in nicknames. The first one to take it. Because the contract will reject the second one due to the similarity to the first one.
The other names that are not reserved are the ones with special characters, like kap://🐧.koin. Koinos Nicknames only use letters, numbers, dots or hypens.
Integration in wallets
Koinos Nicknames will be supported in Kondor Wallet. I will also be in contact with the other wallets, like Koino, Portal, or MKW, to see they can support them as well.
Nicknames for dApps
If you have a dApp, please take a name for it, as this will be important in the future. Koinos Nicknames introduces the Text ABIs (or TABI). I will not detail it now because it requires its own article since I have many things to mention. But for the moment just to say that this is a fundamental pillar of the smart wallet I'm developing to be able to use hardware wallets in koinos. And the dApps that want to be supported will need a nickname and TABI.
Community names
Some names will be reserved for system dApps, like @koin and @vhp, which will also be useful in the future in the integration of the smart contract wallets.
When is the launch?
Next October 7th 2023 KOINOS NICKNAMES will be available! So reserve this date to pick your name 😀🚀
Donations
I'm not earning money for doing this service. As I said this is totally free and the reason of doing that is to add as much value as possible to Koinos so it can compete with other blockchains and go to the masses.
If you like this work please send a donation to continue supporting this development. I would like to reach 20k. There are several ways you can contribute:
- Send a donation to 1z629tURV9KAK6Q5yqFDozwSHeWshxXQe.
- Become a sponsor in https://github.com/sponsors/joticajulian
- Buy a Kondor NFT
- Join the JGA Mining Pool (very good APY).