Buying a domain name on Bonfida (Part 1)

I've been seeing lots of Bonfida on my domain name, and decided to check them out. The three products that I was interested in are:

• domain name service
• twitter handle alias
• chat service

First the domain name service. Bonfida is offering domain names on the .sol TLD. Given what happened with Ethereum Naming Service earlier this year, with ENS users getting airdropped 30 grand in reward tokens, I am guessing the airdrop is on Bonfida users minds as well.

I admit ignorance of the details of ENS, just don't have time to read up on details beyond the twitter stream. Anyway, let's try to get a nice domain for our 8Pi tokens shall we.

Domain name service can be found here:

1. search for a domain, via an auction list (what's that? We'll find out!)

2. Search for a domain name. Only .sol names are available. But interestingly, Expires Never. Does that mean if you buy it, you own it permanently? That's pretty cool!

3. Alright let's try to register

4. Surprise! It'a an auction. Trying to register the domain triggers a 3 day auction period. The proceeds go to buy FIDA tokens and burn them. So its basically a profit share for FIDA holders.

5. Click confirm to create auction

6. Connect to wallet

7. Giving Bonfida access to the wallet.

8. Approve the transaction in phantom. $0.98 (at Solana $207). This is the fee to get the auction started.

9. Auction ends in 3 days. This is annoying. You can't purchase and move on.

10. Let's place a bid. Minimum bid is 2.625 FIDA, and you need to go buy some FIDA, which is about $7.36 a token now. Making the price about $19.32. Which is not bad if it never expires. Compared to $12 per year for most other services. Also note that it's pseudonymous domain purchase.

Part 2 to follow on finishing the purchase 3 days from now...

Some notes as I played around with the functionality:

• I was able to start an auction denominated in USDC instead of FIDA tokens. I guess if you have a USDC token account in wallet, you can start a USDC auction
• On one auction, the time was set to 7 days because the auction had failed before. So basically in cases where they suspect there was enough demand, they extend the auction period. Are they able to message the previous auction participants? Perhaps that's why they came up with the messaging service next.
• I saw someone buying a flag emoji domain name, but I was not able to buy the π symbol. Oh well.