Beldex Name Service (BNS) Development Update

4 min readOct 9, 2023

The Beldex Name Service (BNS) is the next major on-chain update on the Beldex network and an important feature on BChat and BelNet. Here’s an update on the most recent BNS development.

BNS Development Update

BNS is close to completion. That’s a relief and a shocker as the most-awaited on-chain update on the Beldex network is set to result in a hard fork. However, this hard-fork wouldn’t create a new token or a chain, but add to the Beldex network the functionality to buy and sell BNS names.

Buy BNS Name & Domain in a Single Transaction

Users can buy BNS for wallet address, BChat and BelNet in a single transaction instead of two different transactions. This saves cost and reduces the number of transactions. A user only needs to register once to reserve a BNS name/domain.

Subscription Model

Previously, only BNS domains were based on a subscription model while BNS names could be bought for lifetime. However, since BNS names and domains are now registered in a single transaction, they will share the same namespace. Therefore, BNS names will also follow a subscription model.

Resolving to Specific Identifiers

A BNS name/domain can be resolved to a BChat ID/BelNet Address/Wallet Address. For example, if the BNS name anon.bdx is resolved to a BChat ID, it could now also be resolved to a BelNet address and a Beldex wallet address. Users would just have to specify the BChat ID, BelNet address, and the Beldex wallet address in the same transaction while making the purchase.

The .bdx Extension

This also means that the suffix .bdx is not limited to BNS domains. They’re now a part of the BNS names too! You can buy a BNS name, say, Garfield and the .bdx extension would be appended to it such as Garfield.bdx.

How do you buy a BNS Name / Domain

This brings us to the next big question. How do we buy a BNS name and the corresponding BNS domain in a single transaction?

It’s quite simple.

All a user has to do is buy a BNS name/domain using their Electron wallet or CLI wallet.

Naturally, this means that the wallet that they are using would be the “owner” of the respective BNS name/domain. The users will also be able to specify the resolving identifiers while making the purchase. These include,

Wallet address (this may or may not be the same as the “owner” wallet address)
A BChat ID (to which the BNS name would be resolved to)
A BelNet address (to which the BNS domain would be resolved to)

Either one of the above three is mandatory. If a user provides the resolving wallet address, then they choose to not provide a BChat ID or a BelNet address while making the purchase. However, they will be able to update it at a later time.

First Come, First Serve

If a user tags their BNS name to their BChat ID and does not tag the corresponding BNS domain to a BelNet address, then will another user be able to buy the same BNS domain?

No. Whether a user chooses to resolve the BNS domain to a BelNet address or not, the domain will be reserved for them until its expiry.

This is because BNS names and BNS domains now share the same namespace.

BNS Fee & Subscription

BNS names and BNS domains have the same subscription periods.

You can buy them for a period of 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years. The subscription fee is as follows:

650 BDX for 1 year
1000 BDX for 2 years
2000 BDX for 5 years and
4000 BDX for 10 years

We understand that a lot of thought goes into the purchase of your BNS name/domain. These subscription periods have been determined taking into account the needs of our users.

Short term subscriptions may be used for purposes such as domain flipping while longer periods may benefit an individual or a business seeking to build a brand.

A user may choose to transfer the ownership of the BNS name/domain even before the end of their subscription period.

Naming Rules & Conventions

There are a few naming rules and conventions while buying BNS names & domains. Both are suffixed by the extension .bdx.

BNS names are case insensitive.

What qualifies for a BNS name/domain?

Lynx.bdx✅

0Lynx.bdx ✅

Lynx123.bdx ✅

What doesn’t qualify for a BNS name/domain?

#Lynx ❌

$_$Lynx ❌

Lynx-.bdx ❌

Basically, a BNS name/domain should be alphanumeric.

Transfer of Ownership

Users would be able to transfer the ownership of the BNS name/domain from the “owner” wallet to any other wallet of their choice.

They may also choose to transfer it to a secondary buyer. Beldex is working on a BNS marketplace where users can make peer-to-peer BNS transactions.

Beldex will introduce this platform so that users may be able to buy and sell their BNS names and domains on a secondary market.

A flat transfer fee of 50 BDX is levied by the network for each secondary transfer/sale.

Users may be able to fix their own fee for a secondary sale along with the transfer fee. The transfer fee of 50 BDX is burned.

Burning BDX Fee

Fees from BNS purchases and transfers are burned. They are sent to a wallet whose seed is unknown, similar to how fees from flash transactions are burned.

Thus, BNS is designed in such a way that the more people use it, the more BDX is taken out of circulation. Individuals, businesses, and organizations who use the Beldex ecosystem will directly be responsible for determining the growth and sustainability of BDX.

***