Algorand Name Service is a decentralized name service on the Algorand crypto platform providing .algo domain names for representing Algorand wallet addresses. The Algorand Name Service (ANS) launched on mainnet on Feb 25, 2022, after six months of development and 45 days of public beta-testing. Users can also link their social media handles and avatars to .algo names for easy resolution. Names purchased on ANS can also be traded with other wallet owners for a transfer fee set by the owner. “The Algorand community is growing at an incredible pace and the Algorand Name Service is meant to welcome new users with the type of name service everybody expects in a crypto platform: decentralized and community-governed!” – Sai Medury, Co-Founder & Researcher, Algorand Name Service
The ANS team listens to the community and delivers.” – Chris, Founder of Rand Gallery
The ANS project has gathered over 10,000 name registrations in under three weeks and the team is thrilled with the enthusiastic response and grateful for the invaluable community feedback during iterations.
“Algorand community members are passionate, proactive, and highly informed. We’re thrilled with the opportunity to iterate with Algorand community members and we are extremely grateful for the invaluable feedback we received over the past few months.” – Lalith Medury, Co-Founder & Software Engineer, Algorand Name Service
Decentralized. Opensourced. Community-driven. Simple.
The ANS team believes that a native name service is essential in every crypto platform for enabling a friendly user experience. Essential services must be community governed and operated to maintain the degree of decentralization made possible by blockchain platforms. Funds gathered from all payments made by users for purchasing domain names on ANS will be held in a DAO-governed treasury
and the ANS team envisions distributing these funds back to the community to support the development of new projects.
Rand Gallery and other app integrations
After the successful launch of ANS on the mainnet, the ANS development team is now focussing on libraries and SDKs for integration. ANS REST API is now available for public testing. JavaScript and Python SDK will be rolled out in the next few days. Rand Gallery, the popular NFT gallery and marketplace on Algorand, is the first app to integrate ANS for name lookup and resolution. Asalytic, the NFT analytics platform on Algorand, has also integrated ANS in its command search palette supporting search using .algo names. The Codex NFT collection has integrated ANS to display .algo names instead of wallet addresses. And many more apps are expected to integrate ANS.
Funded by Algorand Foundation
The Algorand Foundation is a Non-Profit Organization that helps support the Algorand ecosystem’s growth and development through grant awards. The ANS project received a development grant award from Algorand Foundation to support the next phase of iteration. The ANS team is grateful to Algorand Foundation for all their support and guidance throughout the journey, beginning from the Encode
club hackathon followed by the Encode x Algorand Accelerator program and the grant award.
What’s Next for ANS?
The ANS team is focused on expanding TLD support to .dapp and .asa to include other network resources such as smart contract applications and algorand standard assets. Subsequently, the ANS marketplace will be iterated and launched later this month (March 2022). And the ANS team will then be focusing on building the ANS DAO and token launch.
About Algorand
Algorand is a highly decentralized, scalable, and cost-effective crypto platform founded by Silvio Micali (Turing Award winner 2012). Algorand continues to maintain 100% uptime since its initial launch in 2019 and is ideal for building DeFi apps and services. It is also the host to a vibrant NFT space with over 1.8 Million ALGOs trades for NFTs in the last month (Feb 2022).
