Built-in name market

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JohnDoe
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat May 28, 2011 8:46 pm
os: linux

Built-in name market

Post by JohnDoe »

There was an interesting discussion on IRC started by agreenbhm which I thought deserved its own thread. Basically the idea is to allow buying and selling names for NMC through the network by introducing some new transaction types. Some examples:

Buying names
name_offer <name> <amount> [block_expire]
name_offer_withdraw <name/txid> [block]
name_offer_accept <txid>

Offer X amount of NMC for ownership of a name. NMC stays in limbo until the offer expires or is withdrawn manually.

Selling names
name_sell <name> <amount> [block_expire]
name_sell_withdraw <name/txid> [block]
name_buy <name/txid>

Offer name for X amount of NMC. First to match gets the name. Names can still be updated while they are up for sale.

Auction
name_auction <name> <starting_amount> [block_end]
name_bid <name/txid> <amount>

Bids go to limbo and can't be withdrawn to avoid manipulation. Auctions can't be withdrawn either to avoid wasting people's time and money (in tx fees). Also there should be should be some limits on the ending block to avoid some scenarios like people bidding on an auction that ends in a billion blocks.

Advantages
- Visibility of offers. Since domain owners are mostly anonymous it would be pretty difficult to contact them with offers. You could try posting an offer on an auction site but there's little certainty that it will be seen by the domain owner. Also this 'centralization' would allow name sellers to get more bidders because people would need to look at only one place for sales instead of various auction sites.
- More transaction revenue for miners.
- Probably cheaper fees than an auction site.
- Your level of privacy is preserved.
- Can't get taken down.

Thoughts?
Last edited by JohnDoe on Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

khal
Site Admin
Posts: 708
Joined: Mon May 09, 2011 5:09 pm
os: linux

Re: Built-in name market

Post by khal »

Here is his work on this idea :
http://dot-bit.org/Name_Exchange


ps : interesting discussion indeed, more comments later :p. Another initiated discussion was about a built-in messaging system.

Edit : an interesting escrow feature :
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/319
https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin/ ... escrow.txt
NamecoinID: id/khal
GPG : 9CC5B92E965D69A9
NMC: N1KHAL5C1CRzy58NdJwp1tbLze3XrkFxx9
BTC: 1KHAL8bUjnkMRMg9yd2dNrYnJgZGH8Nj6T

Register Namecoin domains with BTC
My bitcoin Identity - Send messages to bitcoin users
Charity Ad - Make a good deed without paying a cent

JohnDoe
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat May 28, 2011 8:46 pm
os: linux

Re: Built-in name market

Post by JohnDoe »

khal wrote:Here is his work on this idea :
http://dot-bit.org/Name_Exchange


ps : interesting discussion indeed, more comments later :p. Another initiated discussion was about a built-in messaging system.
Pretty nice. I see no purpose in adding a transaction just to reject offers though. Also encrypting the price of counter offers would not be desirable for the name owner in most cases.

lebish
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun May 29, 2011 7:58 am
os: mac

Re: Built-in name market

Post by lebish »

I think this is a great idea and would be wonderful to see built into the software.

I don't think it's of any use to protect the offer price or counter offer price. In fact, I think these should be public to encourage a more competitive process. Just like on eBay, you can't see the bidder but you can see the price history and minimum sell pice.

Also, just how we have name_scan and name_list now, why not have offer_scan and offer_list?
bitcoin://1N8v3K9JkNsMaffJZNzRmyUnwtuAxZv7Qa
namecoin://MwsunGebPhErL9fFPi3JLZqFZGJxfzV98b

JohnDoe
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat May 28, 2011 8:46 pm
os: linux

Re: Built-in name market

Post by JohnDoe »

lebish wrote: Also, just how we have name_scan and name_list now, why not have offer_scan and offer_list?
Yeah, we should definitely have those commands.

moa
Posts: 255
Joined: Mon May 23, 2011 6:13 am

Re: Built-in name market

Post by moa »

What are the advantages of this versus an auction site?

What are the risks to krufting up the source code?

Risks/benefits.

agreenbhm
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2011 12:41 pm
os: windows

Re: Built-in name market

Post by agreenbhm »

moa wrote:What are the advantages of this versus an auction site?

Risks/benefits.
Please see this: http://dot-bit.org/Name_Exchange#Preface for an explanation. As far as mucking up source, I cannot comment on that.
-----
My vision: provide distributed P2P escrow name exchange.

As far as encrypting the offer price, this is purely a means to protect the buyer. There have been lawsuits and precedents set (in the US) regarding domain squatters purchasing names (such as celebrity or company names) and then attempting to resell them at outrageous prices. Since Namecoin is designed to give users DNS freedom, it only seems right to protect names from being snatched up for the sole purpose of turning a profit or extorting money from legitimate users (ex. putting Goatse at SarahJessicaParker.bit).

My fear is that if the offer price is not encrypted, someone (or a bot) will simply watch the block chain for offers, take the offer price and up it, then send that offer to the name owner. Obviously the name owner is interested in getting the most NMC possible for a name, so he will sell to the 3rd party, who will then own this name that the original buyer wanted. He can sell for as much as he wants. If this is Microsoft.bit, and the original offer was for 50 NMC, the 3rd party offered 55 NMC and purchased it, and now has set the sell price to 10,000 NMC just because they found someone had interest in it, we're really facilitating another kind of monetary exchange than was the original goal.

My idea was not to turn Namecoin into an all-purpose marketplace, but rather to allow for the simple trusted exchange of names. I felt that if someone were interested in driving the bidding up on a name, they could post it in some other place (such as a forum). That was the initial idea. The more we build on this, the larger namecoind is going to get, and the less focused the whole project will become on DNS freedom.

JohnDoe
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat May 28, 2011 8:46 pm
os: linux

Re: Built-in name market

Post by JohnDoe »

moa wrote:What are the advantages of this versus an auction site?
- Visibility of offers. Since domain owners are mostly anonymous it would be pretty difficult to contact them with offers. You could try posting an offer on an auction site but there's little certainty that it will be seen by the domain owner. Also this 'centralization' would allow name sellers to get more bidders because people would need to look at only one place for sales instead of various auction sites.
- More transaction revenue for miners.
- Probably cheaper fees than an auction site.
- Your level of privacy is preserved.
- Can't get taken down.

I'll edit this if I can think of more.
agreenbhm wrote:My idea was not to turn Namecoin into an all-purpose marketplace, but rather to allow for the simple trusted exchange of names. I felt that if someone were interested in driving the bidding up on a name, they could post it in some other place (such as a forum). That was the initial idea. The more we build on this, the larger namecoind is going to get, and the less focused the whole project will become on DNS freedom.
Doesn't make much sense to me to make the name exchange only partially usable. If it ever gets implemented it'd be better to make it fully featured or else it just won't be worth the trouble.

Delia
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 8:32 pm
os: linux

Re: Built-in name market

Post by Delia »

JohnDoe wrote:- Visibility of offers. Since domain owners are mostly anonymous it would be pretty difficult to contact them with offers. You could try posting an offer on an auction site but there's little certainty that it will be seen by the domain owner. Also this 'centralization' would allow name sellers to get more bidders because people would need to look at only one place for sales instead of various auction sites.
You're not necessarily wrong, but...

Have you noticed that every networked application these days, from web forums to online games, has its own mail/messaging system? I'm not convinced that's a positive trend.

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