Marketplace

Introduction

Portal Network Marketplace, Vickrey Auction Applied

Portal Network’s BNS standard seeks to determine the true market value of domain names across multiple blockchain protocols before allowing registration. Hence, our BNS standard uses an auction system backed by smart contracts to guarantee tamper-proof and transparency. Moreover, an auction system can potentially prevent ‘price sniping’ from domain squatter; it’s a blind second-price auction, also known as a ‘Vickrey Auction’.

With this second-price sealed-bid auction, Portal Network designed its marketplace for users to bid, buy, sell BNS. Through this article, we will discuss the underlying motivation for using the suchlike mechanism and our marketplace services.

In a Vickrey Auction, a participant (address) of the domain is only aware of their own bid. The bids of each domain are only revealed at the end of the auction when a winner is chosen. The winner has to pay the second highest bid instead of their own bid.

The advantage of Vickrey Auction is that it eliminates the possibilities for others to force a higher bid. Since no one knows the bid, bidders are encouraged to bid the amount they are truly willing to pay.

The sealed-bid method prevents any bidders from getting advantages of knowing what others have bid. A second-price mechanism encourages everyone to bid truthfully. In other words, Vickrey auction incentivizes participators to bid the maximum value they are willing to pay in a single round, as opposed to highest-price auctions, where people can affect the opponents by raising the bid endlessly or lying about the value they are actually feeling to put.

Most of the blockchain projects that use Vickrey Auction for domain name bidding now involve a cumbersome process: the unveil period. Participants should reveal the details in the revealing period otherwise lose the entire bid. As this eventually became the base model of the Portal Network marketplace, it simplifies and optimizes by eliminating this part of the process.

Therefore the procedure will be:

• Bid commitment: Prepay the bid, so no one withholds payment during the 5-day timer. Bids are enclosed thus no one knows your bidding price.

• Winner Selection: Winner pays the second highest bid when the auction is finalized. People get refunds if they lose the auction. A small amount of transaction fee will be deducted.

Portal Network marketplace supports universal domain name services. Besides the trading function, Portal Network marketplace also provides a user-friendly dashboard to track the bidding process. Users can use the built-in calendar to know the progress of each BNS, manage various wallet accounts balances through Wallet, as well as control all your domain names through a bidding history page.

Tutorial

Getting your Blockchain Domain Name

STEP 1. Sign up at Portal Network’s marketplace Sign up at our marketplace with your personal email. We will give each signed-up user a subdomain for free, which could later be used for registering your wallet address.

STEP 2. Confirm registration through email Once received the confirmation email, click the link provided to confirm and finalize your registration.

STEP 3. Enter the invite code to activate an account *NOTE * To ensure that every function is operational, Marketplace will initially be invited only, meaning you will need an additional invite code in order to start bidding for domains. Get invite code by joining the official telegram channel.

STEP 4. Deposit your cryptocurrency to your marketplace wallet Copy your marketplace wallet address and transfer your cryptocurrency. If you don’t have any cryptocurrency, read How to get your own Cryptocurrency.

STEP 5. Search for your favorite domain name at the marketplace Type in the domain name in the search bar. The result will show availability of the name.

STEP 6. Start bidding your choice of domain name If the name is available, you can start the auction by placing a bid. Different rules apply to different chains when placing a bid.

	Domain Character	Minimum Bid Price	Auction Period
Ethereum	≥ 7	≥ 0.01 ETH	5 days
Ethereum Classic	≥ 7	≥ 0.01 ETC	5 days
Wanchain	≥ 6	≥ 0.1 WAN	5 days

*NOTE* Domain names of each chain only support its native token. For instance, if you are bidding for “example.eth”, you will need ETH. If you are bidding for “example.wan”, you will need WAN.

STEP 7. Place your bid and wait to be notified with the result in 5 days via email Once you successfully placed a bid, everything is set. We will notify the final result via email in 5 days.