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The Namoshi Protocol is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Citrea blockchain.

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Namoshi Architecture

Namoshi has two principal components:
  1. The registry: The core contract that maintains a mapping of all domain names.
  2. Resolvers: Smart contracts that translate names into addresses and other resources.
Namoshi operates similarly to DNS (Domain Name System) but with significantly different architecture due to the capabilities and constraints of the Citrea blockchain. typically, Namoshi names are human-readable names like nemo.btc or nemo.citrea that map to machine-readable identifiers such as Citrea (EVM) addresses, other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata.

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Top-Level Domains

Unlike ENS which primarily operates on .eth, Namoshi focuses on bringing decentralized identity to the Bitcoin ecosystem via:
  • .btc: Represents Bitcoin-native identities.
  • .citrea: Represents identities on the Citrea rollup.

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The Registry

The Namoshi registry is a single smart contract that maintains a list of all domains and subdomains. For each domain, it stores three pieces of information:
  • The owner of the domain.
  • The resolver for the domain.
  • The caching time-to-live (TTL) for all records under the domain.
The owner of a domain may be either an external account (a user) or a smart contract. A registrar is simply a smart contract that owns a domain and issues subdomains of that domain to users that follow some set of rules defined in the registrar contract.

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Resolvers

Resolvers are responsible for the actual process of translating names into addresses. Any contract that implements the relevant standards may act as a resolver in Namoshi. When resolving a name in Namoshi:
  1. The user asks the registry for the resolver responsible for the name.
  2. The user asks that resolver for the answer to their query.

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Discount System

Namoshi implements a unique discount system for domain registration, allowing users to reduce costs through:
  • Referrals: Secure referral codes.
  • NFT Ownership: Holding specific ERC721 tokens.
  • Whitelists: Merkle-proof based whitelists.