Name System

Aergo contains a name service to translate addresses into easy to remember short names.

One name maps to exactly one address. Names are currently fixed to a length of 12 characters.

Names include an owner and a destination. The owner is used to determine who can change the name, the destination is the actual adress the name should resolve to. In case of normal accounts, these two values will be identical, but they differ in case of smart contracts.

Creating and updating names

The easiest way to create and update names is the aergocli.

Registering and updating names requires spending a cetrain amount of aergo determined by the DAO vote “nameprice”.

To register a new name:

aergocli name new --from my_unlocked_account_address --name my12charname

To change the destination of the name:

aergocli name update --from my_unlocked_account_address --to account_address_or_contract_address --name my12charname

Warning

The update command affects both the destination and the owner of a name. If the new destination is a regular account, both owner and destination are set to that address. If the new destination is a smart contract address, the owner is set to the address of that contract’s creator.

Lookups

To retrieve the owner and destination of a registered name:

aergocli name owner --name my12charname

The destination field contains the resolved address.

This method is also available over RPC and in the various SDKs.

Reverse lookups

Aergo server currently supports no way to do reverse lookups, i.e. finding all names associated with an address. On public networks, you can use block explorers like Aergoscan to find that information.

Technical details

Names are stored in the state of the special account aergo.name. They are created and updated using special governance transactions. Refer to transaction types for the technical specification of these actions. Governance transactions don’t require any fee, but the name system requires an amount of aergo to be included in the transaction. This amount is determined by the DAO vote “nameprice”. You can check the current name price in the ChainInfo. When using the CLI, the price is automatically set.

Transactions that create or update names are effective after they are included in a block. That means that you can only refer to new or updated names in the following block.