Aptos Naming Service: Your New Identity
You may be familiar with Solana and Ethereum name services, but a new naming service that promises to be significant has just arrived.
Accessing information from a webpage was a time-consuming and difficult operation in the early days of the internet, which was a significant hurdle for computer experts and even common internet users. The early days of the internet did not have domain names like https://www.binance.com or https://www.twitter.com; instead, websites were accessed using complete IP addresses. Take into consideration needing to remember or write down the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of every website you plan to visit on the internet every day. An IP address, for instance, has the format 88.888.888.888. Because of this, utilizing the internet became difficult and chaotic for everyone, including computer engineers. According to a 2007 MetaMuse survey, US broadband internet users visit 120 websites on average each day, which would have required them to memorize or record 120 IP addresses each day.
However, Paul Mockapetris created the Domain Name System (DNS) in 1983 to remedy this IP address's unfriendliness. Internet protocol addresses are no longer needed by users to visit websites; instead, users utilize domain names like https://www.medium.com or https://www.youtube.com. Though not entirely the same, the domain name system can be likened to the Aptos name service.
The Aptos Name Service is a smart contract that maps a name to an Aptos address, leveraging the power of Aptos tokens and the Aptos blockchain to give users identity on the Aptos blockchain. Just like the Ethereum name service, the Aptos name service is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Aptos blockchain to map human-readable names like 'format.aptos’ to machine-readable identifiers such as Aptos addresses, transaction hashes, and metadata.
What this means is that users can identify their wallet addresses in easily readable or understandable forms as 'format.aptos’ instead of 0x04fc5269c760e61b806712c3dc0ba97c2ed6bb000e5a7c2cda74cb20e6f.
The Aptos name service will be deployed on the Aptos main network, which goes live in Q3 of 2022, and is currently on the Aptos test networks.
The Aptos name service offers better features to users than the traditional domain name system as it doesn't suffer from the security issues faced by the domain name system. The domain name system is centralized, which renders it vulnerable to hacking and cyberterrorism because domain name records are kept on a single server. Unlike the domain name records, records for the Aptos name service are safely kept on the fully decentralized Aptos blockchain, which protects them from centralized attacks and any single point of failure.
Have you heard of blockchain transparency? The Aptos name service also promotes transparency as users can interact using their unique Aptos identity.
The Aptos name service protocol is still in development and is currently on testnet. The entire Aptos blockchain resets every week so all Aptos names and tokens are lost during reset. So, join the testing and build with the Aptos name service team.
