History

The Beginning: ENS Launch and Auction

The Ethereum Name Service officially launched on May 4th, 2017. This marked a significant step towards making Ethereum more user-friendly by replacing complex hexadecimal addresses with human-readable names.

Unlike the instant registration model used today, the initial distribution of .eth names employed a unique auction mechanism known as a Vickrey auction. This system was designed to fairly allocate names and prevent squatting.

How the Vickrey Auction Worked:

Bidding Period: Users could place bids on the .eth names they wanted. Critically, these bids were placed blindly – the amounts were hidden.
Reveal Period: After the bidding period closed, bidders had a specific window to reveal their bids. Revealing the bid required submitting the actual bid amount along with a secret phrase used when placing the bid.
Winner Determination: The highest bidder won the name.
Payment: The winner paid the amount of the second-highest bid (this is the key characteristic of a Vickrey auction).
Locking Funds: Bids were locked as deposits. If a bidder failed to reveal their bid during the reveal period, their entire deposit was burned (lost).

Auction Rules and Nuances:

Minimum Length: Initially, only names with seven or more characters were allowed to be registered via the auction. Shorter names were reserved for later release.
Allowed Characters: A wide range of characters, including emojis and non-ASCII characters, were permitted (Names including invalid characters were registered through direct smartcontract interaction; bypassing the UI)
Scheduled Soft Launch (ENS PR #105): Crucially, not all names were available for auction immediately at launch. A "scheduled soft launch" mechanism was implemented, as proposed by Alex Van de Sande and discussed by Nick Johnson. This system released names gradually over a period (initially planned for weeks or months) based on their hash. Essentially, only names whose hash met a certain (decreasing over time) threshold could be auctioned. This meant highly desirable names like ethereum.eth were calculated to be available only weeks or months after the initial launch (e.g., ~59 days for ethereum.eth according to early calculations). This mechanism prevented an instant land grab and explains why many early registered Prepunks are creative variations, misspellings, or less common words – bidders had to target names that were actually available according to the schedule.
Bid Masking: To protect bidders and prevent others from simply outbidding by a small amount, bids were often masked with "chaff" bids (explained later) and hidden hashes.

The "Pre-Punk" Era:

The period immediately following the launch, specifically from May 9th, 2017, to June 23rd, 2017, is what defines the "Prepunk" era. Names successfully registered and finalized during this timeframe represent the very first wave of ENS adoption, predating many other significant milestones and NFT projects on Ethereum.

This initial auction phase, with its complexities and specific timeframe, laid the groundwork for the ENS ecosystem we see today and created a set of historically significant digital assets – the Prepunks.

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Last updated 8 days ago

The Beginning: ENS Launch and Auction

How the Vickrey Auction Worked:

Bidding Period: Users could place bids on the .eth names they wanted. Critically, these bids were placed blindly – the amounts were hidden.

Reveal Period: After the bidding period closed, bidders had a specific window to reveal their bids. Revealing the bid required submitting the actual bid amount along with a secret phrase used when placing the bid.

Winner Determination: The highest bidder won the name.

Payment: The winner paid the amount of the second-highest bid (this is the key characteristic of a Vickrey auction).

Locking Funds: Bids were locked as deposits. If a bidder failed to reveal their bid during the reveal period, their entire deposit was burned (lost).

Auction Rules and Nuances:

Minimum Length: Initially, only names with seven or more characters were allowed to be registered via the auction. Shorter names were reserved for later release.

Allowed Characters: A wide range of characters, including emojis and non-ASCII characters, were permitted (Names including invalid characters were registered through direct smartcontract interaction; bypassing the UI)

Scheduled Soft Launch (ENS PR #105): Crucially, not all names were available for auction immediately at launch. A "scheduled soft launch" mechanism was implemented, as proposed by Alex Van de Sande and discussed by Nick Johnson. This system released names gradually over a period (initially planned for weeks or months) based on their hash. Essentially, only names whose hash met a certain (decreasing over time) threshold could be auctioned. This meant highly desirable names like ethereum.eth were calculated to be available only weeks or months after the initial launch (e.g., ~59 days for ethereum.eth according to early calculations). This mechanism prevented an instant land grab and explains why many early registered Prepunks are creative variations, misspellings, or less common words – bidders had to target names that were actually available according to the schedule.

Bid Masking: To protect bidders and prevent others from simply outbidding by a small amount, bids were often masked with "chaff" bids (explained later) and hidden hashes.

The "Pre-Punk" Era: