ANS Progress Update
We have been quiet on social media lately and we are ready to break the silence by answering some of the most frequently asked questions in ANS Discord, and Twitter.
Here’s a brief summary of highlights (TL;DR version):
- The registry smart contract is going to be updated to include a grace period of 90 days to renew the domain.
- We are waiting on the DAO smart contract audit report. Once we address all issues from the report, we will launch the DAO on MainNet. This is expected to be done in Q2 2023.
- ANS token airdrop is expected after the DAO is launched on MainNet. A reasonable estimate is in Q2 2023.
- Next week, we will include a fresh roadmap on the website, along with the estimated timelines for each task.
What is ANS?
Welcome! ANS — short for Algorand Name Service, is a decentralized, open-sourced, and community-driven name service on the Algorand blockchain. Users can register a .algo domain and link it with an Algorand address, resolvable by the projects that have integrated ANS domain resolution.
The smart contracts, SDKs, and the REST APIs are open-sourced and can be found at: https://github.com/algonameservice
Why the long radio silence?
We have been inactive on social media lately and we apologize to the ANS community for not providing timely project updates in the past few months. The ANS team has mostly been focusing on research and development. We also admit that the initial timelines we set were quite ambitious, and we underestimated the work and effort required for the deliverables. Next week, we will be publishing an updated roadmap in which we mention different tasks the team will be working on, along with an estimated timeline for these tasks.
What is going on with ANS?
It has almost been a year since we launched on MainNet, and here are a few statistics as of 13th Feb 2023:
Domain Registrations: 17477
Domain Transfers: 192
Domain Renewals: 429
Project Treasury (Fee collected from domain registrations and transfers): 193,101 ALGO
We would like to take a moment and thank the Algorand foundation for the grant award, all the community members for their immense support, the projects for integrating the name service resolution, and the users for participating in the project and contributing towards advancing decentralization and open-source projects.
We would also like to remind everyone to RENEW their domains at the earliest to avoid someone else registering the domain.
We will update the registry to include a grace period of 90 days since expiry, during which the following conditions apply:
- ONLY the domain OWNER can renew the domain, and the renewal time is calculated from the time of expiry.
- For example: if the domain expires on 25 Feb 2023, the domain owner can only renew the domain between 25 Feb 2023 and 23 May 2023. If the domain owner decides to renew the domain, irrespective of when the domain owner renews it between that period, the renewal time will be calculated from 25 Feb 2023.
2. No other account can register the domain during the grace period.
What is the current status?
Over the past few months, we have been building smart contracts for the DAO, identifying and resolving minor bugs in the user interface, and building the front end for the DAO operations.
We are currently in the process of getting the smart contract for the DAO audited, and the DAO will launch on MainNet soon after. At the moment, we cannot provide a timeline for the DAO launch as it depends on multiple factors, other than just the development.
We will be releasing the latest changes on the DAO in the short term which include the following updates:
- DAO update proposal: Users can propose changes to the DAO smart contract, including updating or removing certain types of proposals.
- Staking to vote on the proposal: Users must now stake ANS tokens to vote on the proposal. The vote count will be incremented by the number of tokens they stake. The staked tokens can be withdrawn after the voting period ends.
- Collect rewards: Users that vote on a proposal are eligible for $ANS reward tokens after the voting period ends.
These changes will be reflected in the roadmap as well.
Why DAO?
As a community-driven project, we believe the community must have a say in shaping the future of the project. Therefore, we are building a DAO to enable the community to propose:
- Social updates: Proposals that address the social aspects of the project but do not require a registry update.
- Registry updates: Proposals that require an update to the registry’s logic and will involve updating the smart contract’s approval and clear program.
- Funding proposals: Proposals that enable projects to request funds to build applications on Algorand.
- DAO Updates: Proposals that require an update to the DAO smart contract.
Why is it taking so long for the DAO?
Algorand Smart Contracts are feature-rich and dynamic but their design imposes strict limitations on transaction sizes. We had to overcome multiple design challenges and collaborated with Algorand Foundation developers to creatively design the DAO smart contract that accepts a deposit to add a proposal and later allows others to vote on this proposal.
Further, we also implemented staking ANS tokens to vote on proposals, which required an additional smart contract.
Apart from the development challenges that we encountered, the economic factors and market conditions are partly the reason why we have not launched the DAO on MainNet yet. This was communicated to the Algorand Foundation in our recent grant report update.
With all the major development pieces ready, we are now waiting on the smart contract audit report to launch the DAO on MainNet. There is no clear timeline on this, as we are waiting on the audit report, and potential bugs to be fixed before the deployment. A reasonable estimate is Q2 2023.
When airdrop?
The ANS DAO is expected to distribute $ANS tokens to domain holders and beta testers after minting the token on MainNet and deploying the DAO on MainNet.
The $ANS token is a utility token strictly for governance purposes. The ANS DAO governance process follows a stake-to-vote model for approving proposals. There is no clear timeline for minting the token and for airdrop, as the DAO launch on MainNet must precede the token launch. As we are expecting the DAO launch in Q2 2023 (estimated), it is reasonable to expect the token launch and airdrop soon after the DAO Launch.
What is next?
First, we will update the registry program to include a grace period of 90 days to enable the domain holders to renew their domain after expiry.
Next, we will include a fresh roadmap on the website, along with an estimated timeline for each of the tasks.
Further, we will start providing monthly updates via Medium to keep the ANS community updated on the status of the project.
Thank you again, for all your support in the past year and we continue to look forward to your support.
