Koinos Account Protocol is service aimed at making blockchain easy to access, especially for those who have never used blockchain before. If you to learn more about KAP, check out my Ultimate Guide to KAP.
KAP operates under three main pillars which are:
- Name Service
- Smart Wallets
- Mana Stations
In this post, we’re going to dig deeper into how the KAP name service functions and why there are three tiers within this service, Premium, Free and TLA.
Names are a BIG deal
After pitching KAP to many no-coiners, I’ve come to realize that people take names for granted. In fact, the ability to get someone’s attention by calling their name is such a natural behavior that we simply expect everyone to have a name.
Imagine you met someone who didnt have a name. How would you even respond to that statement?
As strange as this may sound, it is normal to have no names within blockchain. Instead of names, our identity is wrapped by wallet addressess which are alphanumeric strings that are at least 26 characters long, if not more. This is why having a human readable name on blockchain is a must, and a pretty big deal.
Why Names on Blockchain Are Different Than Web 2.0
In classic web 2.0 systems, we typically create a username for each platform we use, such as twitter, YouTube, Instagram and so forth. The user name is typically not portable, meaning you can’t use a single user name for all your various platforms.
Not only are they simply not portable, they are not valuable.
Value is derived from portability. Let me explain why quickly.
If something cannot be transferred between two parties, than ownership cannot be established and its difficult to value. Take for instance, the Mona Lisa. What if you could buy the Mona Lisa, but you could never physically move it from the Louvre Museum and there were no documents that said you owned it? This would effectively make the painting valueless. Of course, with art, this is often a great thing! With blockchain, this has it’s pros and cons.
Lets examine a few historical examples to help us further understand.
Gmail Accounts
When Gmail was first introduced, the only way to get an @gmail.com account was to be invited. Because the invite was just a unique coupon code, it was portable. Users simply had to post the offering on ebay and they could monetize the unique invite code that was given by google for free. These codes ended up selling for hundreds of dollars.
Facebook Accounts
When FB first came out, it required you to have a college email address to sign up. Despite the demand for a facebook account, users could not simply give away a college email address to anyone. So a FB account was valueless.
Twitter
When Twitter first debuted, it did not achieve instant popularity and user names were generated and forgotten about. As twitter became more popular, certain key names became valuable and the name + password were sold on forums, ebay and even on twitter itself. Even to this date, we find users tagging accounts and asking to buy them.
Why?
Because Names are a big deal! The more short and coherent a name is, the more value someone may find it.
Blockchain + Namespace = Value
When it comes to blockchain, one of the principal traits of value is true ownership.
When it comes to names on the other hand, the principal trait of value is identification.
The marriage of blockchain + namespace = true ownership of identity. If you hold the username, you own the identity. And since each and every name within KAP is unique (every name is a 1 of a kind), then we can clearly see why valuable names are those that are short and concise.
But similarly, because names have value, it is possible that early users could potentially buy all of the most common names and resell it for whatever value they wish because of the true ownership nature of blockchain. This is why there are three tiers to names in KAP.
- Premium Accounts
- Free Accounts
- Top Level Accounts
We’ll go through each in great detail.
Premium Accounts
Premium accounts are defined as any account that has 11 or fewer letters. While the length could be argued for slightly more or less characters, the fact is that there are fewer and fewer coherent names when you have less character. For examle, owning chris.koin would be more desirable than realchris.koin.
Not only do users have to pay for premium accounts, they must also pay yearly to maintain these accounts. We’ve seen that if users believe that a certain name may be valuable, they simply pay a one time fee to squat on it and hope that they can resell it in the future.
At KAP, we believe that this doesnt generate value for the ecosystem as it only creates value for name squatters. Further, because of the basic need for identification, we felt that the premium name space should be preserved as much as possible and for those that could derive the most value from it. This is why premium names have a yearly cost.
From a decentralization perspective, the KAP smart contracts automate everything and no one has control over deleting a name other than the contract. In many ways, the premium name service behaves identical to the ENS name service, which as proven itself as a worthy name service due to its popularity on Ethereum.
If you wish to partake in the KAP ecosystem but dont want to pay for a premium name for whatever reason, we also offer free accounts.
Free Accounts
Free accounts are also a big deal because names are a big deal! With a free KAP account, users gain the value of identification, but they must select a name that is more than 11 characters.
Looking at various web 2.0 services, we learned that the longer the name is, the more it relies on the holder to create value. My online name for instance is motoengineer.koin which is 12 characters long and would qualify as a free name.
How many people would feel that they also identify as motoengineer? And how much would someone pay me to take this name from me?
The answer is few and often $0.00.
This is one of the reasons why KAP has a free tier with no yearly renewal fees. Further, because KAP names are all NFTs, a secondary market could easily exist for the limited number of users who desire a specific name should that situation arise.
Unstoppable Domains (UD) has demonstrated that there is a market for names that have no yearly registration fee, so KAP’s free account service is similar to the behavior of Unstoppable Domains, except its free.
So far, we’ve seen that KAP’s name service is an amalgamate of ENS + UD. But wait! Theres more!
Top Level Accounts
Top Level Accounts (TLA) is a new feature that KAP brings to market that improves upon the concept of names.
Top Level refers to the suffix of an account name. The default Top Level account that KAP manages is the .koin top level account. All premium and free tiered accounts are based on the .koin suffix.
However, KAP also allows the creation of custom suffixes so dApps can freely manage their own Top Level Accounts. For example, if Kollections (the Koinos NFT exchange) wanted to do something unique for users of their service, they could buy and own .kollections and use it in anyway they see fit and they would own the entire namespace within .kollections.
My name for example, motoengineer.koin would be uniquely different than motoengineer.kollections.
Conclusion
Between premium, free and TLA, there is a wide variety of ways an individual user or a dApp developer could utilize KAP’s name space service. The choice is yours.
But bare in mind that KAP is more than a name service. Our three pillars of operation includes
- Name Service
- Smart Wallets
- Mana Stations
If you enjoy this post, please follow me on twitter @kuixihe and stay up to date when we talk about smart wallets and mana station.