In a nutshell, NEO Name service, is a naming service base on NEO blockchain. NEL Group (New Econo Labs) is the team behind NNS. "Make blockchain closer to people" is their slogan of which is what NNS is trying to accomplish.
"NNS can replace long, irregular strings that are hard for human brains to remember with words and phrases."
Someone calls it the Alias DApp of NEO Blockchain.
For example, instead of having an address like:
AWvxosEDpzbYLRNQoUZT5kQ53fm5rkwwrX
With NNS you can have an alias ending in ".neo" like:
matrix.neo
You can also do this with NEO contract hash, content hash and so forth.
Auction
If you are familiar with Ethereum Name Service, there is also an auction involve to be able to own a name. In NNS, the highest bidder in the 3 day period + random time frame(2 days max) gets the name. CGAS* is the "currency" used in bidding a name.
You can try the testnet here: https://testwallet.nel.group/
Tutorial: https://medium.com/neweconolab/nns-testnet-neo-domain-registration-tutorial-3863a71a57e8
Unlike ENS, in NNS, you can see other's bid. There is no "revealing a bid" involve that would otherwise lose your bid.
How big is blockchain based Naming Service Market?
Accoring to ReportLinker, The global Domain Name System (DNS) service market size is expected to grow from USD 238.9 million in 2017 to USD 438.8 million by 2022
Well, compared to Internet Blockchain technology is still in infancy so i think investing early on this is a wise move.
Also, I just checked Ethereum Name Service and the the most expensive bid is locked-up to 20k worth of ETH for a name! That is about millions of dollars!
In ENS, fees from bids get burned and winning bid(price of second highest bid) is locked-up for a year, unless you want to retain your Ethereum Name.
With NNS, CGAS is the currency for bidding. And all CGAS fees are proportionally redistributed to all NNC holders. CGAS can be converted in 1:1 ratio for NEOGAS. This is another reason why you need to HODL.
How to acquire NNC?
NNS did not have a public sale. They did an airdrop for NEO holders in a 1:0.1 ratio.
While not yet on exchanges, you can put a buy order on an OTC group in Telegram where trusted admins on NEO Community are the escrows(see link below). I already have a successful trade there.
If you are hesitant to buy on OTCs, expect the token be tradable on exchanges after few more weeks because mainnet is launching on October 9, 2018. Yes, very soon!
Domain Name Mining (Limited time offer!)
Also, the team decided to give NNC as a reward for early birds who will acquire a NEO Name on the platform. They call it "Domain Name mining". Mining period will start from October 9 to October 22. Rewards will vary between two 6-day periods. NEO Name winners will be rewarded with 70 NNC tokens and then be reduced to 50 NNC for each GAS spent to acquire a domain name.
Good to take advantage of this oppurtunity. I am actually planning to bid many names to acquire more NNCs through Domain Name mining. Not to mention the GAS I will receive just holding these NNCs.
By the way, you can acquire a NEO Name for as low as 0.1 GAS if no one outbids you.
So I suggest thinking of unpopular names, that you think only you will be interested. Regardless of how much you bid for them, you get NNC back if you win. If you have many GAS, bid those popular/catchy names. Yes, you can legally have "Apple.neo" or "Google.neo"!
Secondary Market in development
This is where being an early bird gets more exciting - because you can sell those names for higher price in the secondary market. So the catchy/popular names will be on-demand. This market will be kicking-off soon!
Though not yet official, NNC is the only coin to be accepted to buy a NEO Name in the secondary market - another utility that adds value to NNC. Fees from this platform will also be redistributed to NNC holders.
The team is also coming up with new use cases for NNC token.
There is also a plan for NNS to migrate the same service on Ontology Blockchain.
Final notes
There is a 10% fee if you lose a bid.
Also, don't forget to renew your NEO Name once you have one. The validity of your ownership is 1 year. You can renew within 3 months before it expires. Right now, renewal is free of charge.
You can join our conversation in Telegram here:
https://t.me/forneonameservice
Neo Name Service Website: https://neons.name/index_En.html
Whitepaper: http://doc.neons.name/en/latest/
NNS Twitter: https://twitter.com/NeoNameService
Cryptoholics OTC group: https://t.me/CryptoholicsOTC