EOS - Premium Account Names Are Here

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Bidding on Namespace is an​ exciting​ concept in EOS, why do I have to pay for a memorable name when that is one of the differentiating features of the platform? How do you bid?

Let’s discuss what you need to know with regards to the EOS vanity​ account name bidding service.

Account Name Bidding

Accounts within EOS, much like Steem and Bitshares are what make the platform stand out​ from the crowd, but the default account created for users from the genesis snapshot was not what you would call memorable for sure. Within EOS,​ standard account names must adhere to the following​ three requirements​​.

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1. They must be at least 12 characters long.
2. They can only include lowercase​ letters a - z
3. If they include numbers, they can only be 1 - 5.

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Block.one, the team behind the EOS blockchain, have baked in a feature known as "Premium Account Names" and the ability to bid for them. Everything​ that the Block One team do is always with the intention​ of making the system as far as possible. If they had allowed people to grab any account names they wanted from day one and with no charge, then many people would not have had the opportunity​ even to try and get the account name​ they wanted. This is why we have a bidding service in place, and why it was not live until today (July 4th), it gave everyone in the EOS community a chance to learn about the service and to at least place a bid for the name they wanted.

I have placed bids on various account names that cover my full name​, my nickname, and an account for each member of my immediate family, this​ will make it much easier for me to send tokens between​ accounts. So how does process work and what are the rules of engagement?

When Does Bidding Start And How To Bid

As an EOS token holder, you can place a bid on a vanity account​ name that you have been eyeing up, to put in an offer we turn to the toolkit created by the genereos team which​ can be found here.

Bidding for account names is live now, as mentioned you can go to the tool for genereos to place a bid on a name you want. For the system to allocate the account name to you, there is a 24-hour waiting period from the time that the highest bid was placed on any given account name. This means that if you someone bids on a​ name, the clock for the 24-hour​ countdown starts over.

Also, we are currently waiting​ for winning bids to be allocated​ to accounts​.​ The holding period of 14 days from the mainnet launch was reset during​ the bug encounter on June 20, and when the patch was applied, the counters reset.

Bidding With The CLI

For the super paranoid​ out there who do not like to use web browsers to interact with the EOS blockchain​ and have cleos running on a machine, here is the command syntax you can use. Just make sure to add the -u flag and enter a BP's API address to connect to the mainnet and not your local chain.


Within cleos this is the command for bidding:
bidname( account_name bidder, account_name desired, asset bid )

You can place a bid using the link above to the genereos tool or the cleos command, and if you hold the highest bid at the end of the day, you will get the account name allocated to you.

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From EOS Park

Successful Bid Accounts Are:

1. It has been more than 24 hours since the last successful auction in the entire network
2. The price of the auction is the highest of the entire network
3. The price of the order lasts for more than 24 hours and no one bids again (every auction bid must be more than 10% of the current highest bid price)
4. The auction will start 2 weeks after the main network is activated

Once an​ auction is over

1. After a successful​ auction of account A, the bid account can apply for account A by creating an account, which named A
2. After a successful​ auction of account A, the bid account also automatically acquires all accounts with a suffix of ".A"

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What is also really cool is that this vanity account name can now also be similar to how domain names work in the DNS realm of the internet, not exactly of course. For example, I have bid and won on the vanity account name clarky; this​ also means that I am allowed to create account names with a .clarky suffix.