What Is Tezos Domains and Do You Need a .tez Address?
You have probably seen users with the name user.tez on Twitter or TzKT. These are Tezos Domains.
This post explains how Tezos Domains work, why they are needed, and how to use them.
What Is Tezos Domains
Let’s start with the basics. A domain, or domain name, is an alias for the address of an Internet resource. In fact, website addresses are made up of numbers: they stand for the physical address of the server where the site is hosted. For example, 104.16.227.108 is the IP address of Tezos.com.
When the user enters “Tezos.com” in the browser’s address bar, the browser polls the Domain Name Service (DNS) for the domain name and then forwards the request to it. Roughly speaking, domains work like names in a phone book.
Tezos Domains has the same idea: assign the long address tz12345678uaGJgwwkekk6HwGwaKvjZ7rr9v4 an easy-to-remember alias like user.tez for applications and wallets to work with.
In addition, the domain of the form user.tez.page can be used as the domain of a web page or project on the IPFS network.
The service works by using NFT. The user buys a special FA2 token with whose content their address will be associated.
As of January 2023, users have registered 135,000 Tezos Domains.
How to Get a Tezos Domain
Go to the Tezos Domains application, search for the domain you want, and buy it in one of the ways described below.
Registration. If the domain is free, you can register it for yourself. The cost of registration depends on the length of the domain:
- three characters — 100 tez;
- four characters — 25 tez;
- five characters and longer — 1 tez.
Auction. If the domain has not been registered before, you must buy it through an auction that lasts 7 days. Auctions help combat cybersquatting, where dishonest users pre-register supposedly popular domains and sell them at inflated prices.
Secondary market. Since registered domains exist as NFTs, the owners can sell them on any NFT marketplace as a regular asset. This is cheaper and quicker than participating in an auction.
After purchase, the domain needs to be configured: specify the address it will represent and optionally add additional fields. After confirming the changes, Tezos Domains will update the data in the NFT.
The last step in the configuration is to add a reverse record so that compatible apps would display the domain rather than your address.
Once confirmed, the domain will immediately appear in applications such as TzKT and Temple Wallet.
What Else Can You Do With Tezos Domains
Tezos Domains allows you to attach an avatar to a domain using Gravatar.com. To do this you have to upload an image to Gravatar, get its hash, and add it to the appropriate field in the domain settings.
Tezos Domains can also be used as a domain in IPFS: link user.tez.page to a page in IPFS or redirect requests from user.tez.page to a normal HTTP page. That said, this will only work in IPFS-enabled browsers like Brave.
Lastly, registering subdomains. They work just like subdomains of normal websites. For example, we could register the domain tezosukraine.tez without linking a wallet and then give the team subdomains like pavel.tezosukraine.tez linked to our personal wallets.
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