Let’s take a more technical overview of Punk Domains. The main Punk Domains engines are TLD Factory contracts.
TLD Factories
Each factory has a TLD template that defines its business logic. Currently, there’s only one factory contract which allows for one-time TLD and domain purchases. This means that these domains never expire (holders can hold them forever).
In the future, new TLD factories will be added, each with a different business logic and each with its own mix of one-time and/or renewable TLDs/domains rules (and perhaps new business models that we haven’t thought yet about).
Restricted TLD names
TLD factories need to communicate in order to avoid TLD collision (meaning two factories producing the same TLD).
In order to prevent collisions, there’s a contract called PunkForbiddenTlds, which has a list of already used or restricted TLD names (.eth is an example of a forbidden TLD name, because it’s used in ENS).
TLD contracts
A TLD needs to be purchased (minted) from a TLD Factory for a certain price. There needs to be a (high enough) price to avoid spamming and squatting.
(Note that a TLD Factory can temporarily restrict new TLD mints to the factory owner only.)
A TLD contract can be owned by anyone. The TLD owner can set domain prices and can stop domain sales anytime they want.
- Example of a TLD:
.wagmi - Example of a domain:
techie.wagmi
The factory owner can set a royalty for each domain purchase, but the royalty can never exceed 50% of the domain price (in reallity it will be much lower).
The TLD owner cannot confiscate domain from its holder, just like Factory owner cannot confiscate a TLD from its owner. Factory owner can only set a royalty in the TLD contract and nothing else.
Domains
A domain can only be held by one address, but one address can hold many domains.
A domain can hold many pieces of data:
- The holder’s address (by default).
- Profile picture (an NFT that the user owns).
- URL (like user’s homepage or similar; this comes handy together with the Punk Domains browser plugin).
- Other custom data such as a Twitter handle, description, etc.
All the data is stored on-chain. Each domain is an ERC-721 NFT and can be sold on NFT marketplaces.