# Top-Level Domain Registrar The registrar smart contract is responsible for managing the top-level domains. It sells second-level domains to buyers and allows renewals. ## Open Auction At service launch, every domain is offered to users through auction first. The registrar implements an [open ascending price auction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_auction) model. It is an auction model most people are likely familiar with: all bids are openly visible and every new bid is required to be higher than the last bid. If there are no bids in a given period since the last bid, the auction ends with the highest bidder winning the auction. ### Bids Any account can submit a bid during an active auction and transfer associated funds along in the same transaction. If a bid is higher or equal to the current highest bid multiplied by (100% + [min\_bid\_increase\_ratio](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration)%), it becomes the new highest bid and the previous highest bid becomes refundable or available for future bids (on the same or a different domain). Otherwise, the transaction fails. The auction ends after [bid\_additional\_period](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration) seconds since the last bid, but not earlier than [min\_auction\_period](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration) since the auction's start. A special case is the first bid, which has to be greater or equal to [standard\_price\_per\_day](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration). When a previously unregistered domain name is first bid on, the name is pre-registered in the name registry to ensure its validity. ### Settlement After the auction ends, there is a settlement period of the same length as [min\_duration](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration). The highest bidder invokes the settlement process transferring the domain to a chosen address, which becomes the new owner. The domain is registered for the [min\_duration](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration) (the time spent in the settlement period counts towards that period). If the highest bidder doesn't invoke settlement, the domain is treated as expired after the settlement phase ends. ## First-In First-Served Registration An expired domain becomes available for FIFS only after its auction ended with no bids. In the FIFS model, all domains are sold for a flat fee equal to the [standard\_price\_per\_day](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration). In the period after the launch of the smart contract, all domains are treated as recently expired. For FIFS registration, the contract implements a commit & reveal scheme to avoid [front-running](https://medium.com/consensys-diligence/transparent-dishonesty-taxonomy-of-front-running-attacks-on-blockchain-317d8ff78068) of transactions. ## Renewals Owners of domains can renew their domains at any time up until the domain expires. The chosen renewal period has to be greater or equal to [min\_duration](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration). Renewals are priced using [standard\_price\_per\_day](/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md#configuration). ## Proceeds Proceeds from Tezos Domains registrations and auctions are currently being accumulated in the smart contract. Only the [administrative multisig](/design-document/ownership-overview.md#administrative-multisig) can transfer funds stored in the contract. To learn more about the future plans for Tezos Domains proceeds, please [visit our website](https://tezos.domains/about/proceeds). ## Top-level Domain List The susceptibility to spoofing attacks using look-alike characters is reduced by limiting TLDs to predefined character scripts. Neither whole-script and mixed-script [confusable](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr39/#Confusable_Detection) names can be created under one TLD. The top-level domains available are: | Name | Description | | ------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | | [.tez](/interoperability/.tez-tld.md) | The standard TLD for names in Latin | TLDs for more character scripts will be likely made available in the future. ## Configuration There are several numeric parameters stored to configure this contract in the `config` bigmap. The keys of the bigmap following: * `0 = max_commitment_age` is the maximum time for a buy commitment to be valid (in seconds) * `1 = min_commitment_age` is the minimum time for a buy commitment to be valid (in seconds) * `2 = standard_price_per_day` is the standard FIFS price for a day and the minimum amount that participants have to bid initially in auction (in picotezos = 1e-12 tez) * `3 = min_duration` is the minimum period anyone can register or renew a domain for (in seconds) * `4 = min_bid_increase_ratio` is the minimum ratio of a new bid to the current highest bid (in percent) * `5 = min_auction_period` is the minimum auction period (in seconds) * `6 = bid_additional_period` is the period after which the auction ends measured since the last successful bid (in seconds) * `1000 = launch_date` is the start of the initial auction period for all domains, i.e., the date the service was officially launched (in second since epoch). The value of `0` means no launch has been configured * `1000 + label_length` is the override of the launch date for all labels that are `label_length` characters long --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://developers.tezos.domains/design-document/top-level-domain-registrar.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.