Astar Naming Service - Unstoppable Community Grants Program Application

Astar Astar Initiatives
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:rocket: Introducing Astar Naming Service - A Unified Identity for Astar Ecosystem :rocket:

Hello Astar Community,

We are excited to present a proposal for an innovative domain name service – Astar Naming Service (ANS), conceived during the Encode X Polkadot Hackathon 2023. Followed up by the Unstoppable Grants Programme from the Astar Team.

Why Astar Naming Service?

Despite the existence of a domain registration service in the Astar network, it’s been underutilized, with just 0.09% of the community actively using it. We believe a unified identity solution is essential to improve user experience and interoperability across various Astar platforms.

ANS aims to solve this problem by introducing a more versatile, feature-rich, and integrated service for Astar users and developers.

The Plan

The ANS will be built using a WASM based smart contract with the Swanky toolkit. It will adopt a one-time subscription model, eliminating expiration for domain names.

The roadmap spans over the next three months with a focus on:

  1. Converting to Swanky and modifying domain name parameters
  2. Enhancing the user interface and creating an experimental name resolver search engine
  3. Implementing a DAO for decentralized governance
  4. Initiating dev-relations with multiple projects
  5. Discussing expansion plans equivalent to DID

We are passionate about contributing to the growth of the Astar ecosystem and we invite you to join us on this journey. Your thoughts and inputs are essential to our development process. Let’s create an intuitive, user-friendly, and integrated Astar Naming Service together!

To know more, read the complete proposal here.

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Hello Mystical,

Welcome to Astar Network, and we’re thrilled to have a team looking to build a native product using WASM for our ecosystem!

I have carefully reviewed your application, but still have a few suggestions and questions about your project before making the decision to support you :

  • The name of your proposal is: dApp Staking Proposal however in your full proposal you explain that you are looking to apply to the “Unstoppable Community Grants Program”. If you are looking to join the grant program, I suggest you change dApp Staking Proposal to Unstoppable Community Grants Proposal in the title of your post to make it clear to our users.

  • Your proposal lacks information on :

    • Project overview
    • Your team
    • Your previous work
    • A MVP if you have any
    • Involvement of security
    • Use of grant / dApp Staking
    • Appendix with links to your projects if you have any

Some information can be found in your proposal document, but should be posted directly on the forum for greater transparency. You can use this proposal as an example. You also have the Unstoppable Community Grant application guidelines available here to help you.

ANS aims to solve this problem by introducing a more versatile, feature-rich, and integrated service for Astar users and developers.

Can you explain in more detail your ideas behind “introducing a more versatile, feature-rich and integrated service for Astar users and developers” ?
What real utilities are you going to create for your domain registration service that would differentiate you from the competition?

You mention DAO several times in your proposal and in your milestones.

Can you explain what the point of having a DAO is for your project, and what model you plan to implement?
Also, DAO is an overused word in blockchain, mainly for marketing and difficult to implement and keep active, building a community is in my opinion the first and most important step in moving towards a DAO model.
I’m also concerned that you may have difficulty implementing a DAO and decentralized governance in 3 months, please see Astar’s governance model discussion to learn more about the different aspects of developing a governance model for blockchain projects.

In general, I would suggest working more on your product, its utilities for users and developers and securing partnerships with Astar projects first rather than working on your governance model.

I sincerely believe that domain naming services associated with NFTs will have a real use in the blockchain system and will be an important element of DID, but I need more detailed information about your project before taking a position.

Thank you and I look forward for your responses.

G’, Astar & Polkadot Ambassador

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Hello G’,

Thank you for taking the time to review our proposal and for your insightful comments. We greatly appreciate your feedback and the opportunity to provide more clarity on our project. Here’s an attempt to address your queries:

  1. Title of the Proposal: We appreciate your suggestion regarding the title change. Our proposal indeed aligns more closely with the “Unstoppable Community Grants Program”, and we’ll be sure to make the appropriate changes for greater clarity.

  2. Lack of Information: Our apologies if the initial post seemed lacking in certain details. We would soon update it with the suggested information about our team and previous work in the following post. We understand the importance of transparency and aim to provide comprehensive details directly on the forum.

  3. NFTs as Naming Service: While NFTs can provide certain benefits such as unique identification and potential for secondary market trading, we do understand that integrating NFTs with a domain naming service might overcomplicate things or bring in unnecessary elements for our users. Therefore, we’re proposing an alternative approach that doesn’t rely on NFTs. Instead, we plan to use a simple but effective smart contract-based system that directly maps user-selected names to their corresponding data, be it an IP address, a public key, or any other information. This approach ensures simplicity, high performance, and wide compatibility with various applications.

  4. Versatile, Feature-rich, Integrated Service: We aim to create a service that isn’t just about registering domain names but about creating a unified identity across the Astar ecosystem. Our service will integrate with multiple Astar projects, allowing users to attach websites to domain names and search names to addresses. We are also exploring unique functionalities like social media dApp integration that remains exclusive to name holders, providing them with real utilities.

  5. DAO Implementation: We agree with you that DAO is often used as a buzzword without substantial implementation. Our intention with DAO is to involve the community in decision-making processes concerning fee rates, future upgrades, and overall governance. We believe a DAO model, even though ambitious, will promote transparency and decentralization. However, we understand your concerns about implementing it within three months. We’ll focus more on enhancing our product and securing partnerships, and DAO would be a progressive journey instead of a one-time setup.

We’re grateful for your constructive feedback and guidance. It helps us shape our proposal better, and we look forward to more interactions as we aim to contribute positively to the Astar ecosystem.

Best regards,
Mystical, Astar Naming Service Team

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Hello Astar Community,

We are a team of ambitious undergraduate students with a passion for exploring and innovating in the Web3 space. Over the past year, we have immersed ourselves in learning about blockchain, decentralization, and the transformational possibilities this technology holds.

Although we haven’t launched any projects on the mainnet yet, we have actively participated in several hackathons, using these opportunities to refine our skills and test our ideas. These hackathons have not only exposed us to real-world challenges in the blockchain domain, but they have also equipped us with the agility and resilience required to create innovative solutions. You can check out our work on GitHub here.

Today, we stand at the threshold of implementing our own project on the Astar mainnet – the Astar Naming Service. Despite the challenges that lie ahead, we’re excited to embark on this journey. Our proposal to create a versatile, feature-rich, and integrated naming service reflects our commitment to contribute to the Astar ecosystem and the broader Web3 community.

We understand that the path to success is strewn with learning and growth, and we are prepared to embrace this journey. We have high hopes and are strongly motivated to make our mark in the blockchain space. We look forward to your support, guidance, and feedback as we undertake this exciting venture.

Best regards,
Team Astar Naming Service

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Thanks ANS team!

Im supportive of this proposal and it brings new energy to our space. Working with Swanky, creating examples, and in general contributing to builds with Astars new tools is needed.

The Unstoppable Community Grants is just right for this and could help ignite the build. Im very interested in having a one for all name across both Substrate and EVM accounts. Similar to how the mapping is done with Astar Pass, I think your team is capable of bringing much needed identity solution to complement what we have seen.

Thank you and I look forward to pushing this forward.

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Join Unstoppable Grant
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
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Hello Mystical,

Thank you for answering to my questions and providing more information about your project and team.

I have decided to support your application and vote YES.

Good luck and welcome to the program!

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This is really great , I have always anticipated seeing web3 solution that support both polkadot an EVM chains .

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@ANS_Mystical

Congrats!! The voting is passed. To proceed with the registration, please do the following:

  1. Have a native substrate account with transferrable 1001 ASTR. Share the address here.
  2. Have a verified smart contract (if you are not a dApp, a Hello world contract will do). Share the contract address here.
  3. Add #astar-network, #dAppStaking tags to your GitHub repo.
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We’re thrilled to hear that our proposal has been accepted! Thank you for the guidance on the next steps. We’re eager to get started.

  1. Substrate Account: We have a native substrate account with a transferable balance of 1001 ASTR. Here is the address: 5FThprjjkaSx7nwLFJLZN9VCcdawMtp4zcdNnGEkKe7889s9

  2. Smart Contract: Here’s the deployed address of the contract that was prepared during the hackathon period, we highly recommend not to interact with it since it is not the final product - WbEE6wmiWgvHV45smWprGnpUhNct762ZJodrw6iUP1vc3fY

  3. GitHub Repo: We’ve updated our GitHub repository to include the #astar-network and #dAppStaking topics. You can visit our repo here: GitHub - vking45/astar-naming-service: An Astar Unstoppable Grant Initiative

We look forward to proceeding with the registration and starting our exciting journey in the Astar ecosystem. Should there be any further requirements, kindly let us know.

Best regards,
Team Astar Naming Service

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The addresses have been whitelisted. You can now:

  1. Connect the substrate wallet to Astar Portal
  2. Go to the staking tab and you will be able to see the register button.

Good luck!!

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The needful has been done and the dapp has been registered on the portal under the utility category. Currently some of the fields are placeholders and will be updated with time. Thank you once again for giving us the opportunity. WAGMI :rocket:

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Monthly Check-In Report for Astar Naming Service

Reporting Period: 1st Month

Introduction

Greetings to the Astar community and stakeholders,

We’re thrilled to provide our first monthly check-in report as part of the Unstoppable Community Grants program. The Astar Naming Service team has been hard at work since our project was greenlit, and we’re excited to share the progress we’ve made during the 1st month.

Accomplishments

Conversion of Vanilla ink! to Swanky

We have successfully migrated our codebase from Vanilla ink! to Swanky, a crucial milestone that sets the stage for more rapid and efficient development of our smart contracts.

Transition from Expiration to Non-Expiration Domain Names

Following community feedback and our aim to offer a one-time subscription model, we have made the necessary modifications to our smart contract. Domain names registered with our service will now follow a non-expiring model.

Social Media Presence

While we haven’t been able to focus on this extensively, we have laid the groundwork for our social media presence across vital platforms like Twitter. We believe that community engagement is crucial, and we’re committed to ramping up our efforts in this area in the coming month.

Experimental Name Resolver Search Engine

From the smart contract perspective, we’ve completed the work required for an experimental name resolver search engine that redirects to the website attached to a domain name. The frontend for this feature is currently in development.

Transition to Single Suffix Naming Service - “.star”

Our smart contract now supports domain names with the single “.star” suffix, a move aimed at unifying and simplifying the naming convention across the Astar ecosystem.

In-Progress & Upcoming Initiatives

Frontend Development

We have started working on the frontend UI to ensure a user-friendly experience for our community. The smart contract functionality for attaching a website to a domain name is complete, and the frontend development for this feature is underway.

Social Media Strategy

Having laid the groundwork, we’re now turning our focus to a full-fledged social media strategy aimed at engaging with our community across various platforms. Expect regular updates and interaction from our end starting this month.

Closing Remarks

We are encouraged by the progress we have made this month and are incredibly grateful for the community’s continued support. Our dedication to improving the Astar Naming Service remains steadfast. The upcoming month promises to be even more eventful as we strive to meet our roadmap objectives.

We invite you to join the discussion on the Astar Forums as we continue to evolve this crucial ecosystem service. Thank you for your ongoing support and trust.

Best regards,

Mystical
Astar Naming Service

We look forward to your feedback and will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for your attention and support!

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Thank you Mystical for the timely 1-month check-in! Great to see the team is full steam ahead. I was curious about the social media rollout. Just opening giving ideas so please feel free to ignore :slight_smile:

“A _.star is Born”: Account tweets out which names have been reserve, or minted so far. Ex. sota.star is born!, a.star is born! degen.star is born and so on.

Airlyft.io is also a good way to start growing your social presence and getting users to being to follow and what not.

Thanks again. Looking forward to the continual build!

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Thanks for the report. It’s really great to see projects interacting with WASM / Swanky.
I am looking forward to check new updates soon. Let’s go.

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Thank you very much for the report.

I am glad that the project is moving forward and becoming a useful product.

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I would love to see this project will onboard soon. =)

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Thank you very much for the monthly update! Would you please post the link and maybe screenshot so that it is easier for the community to check? For example, the github link, your social media link (I understand it is not your focus, but we have astar ambassadors and airlyft to help you and promote your update if you post it and share), screenshot of the current frontend or design, etc.

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Thank you for the report and keep building!

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It’s great to see the teams grow, and meet their monthly milestones, I would just add that it would be great to accompany and report some links to follow the development live. Thank you very much and go ahead :clap:

1 Like