Registering a Name

A .kin name is yours forever once registered. There are no annual renewals, no fees, and no central authority. Ownership is proven by a Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) — a computation your CPU must run for a fixed amount of real clock time. There is no shortcut.

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Name format rules

Valid .kin names follow DNS LDH rules:

• Allowed: lowercase letters (a–z), digits (0–9), hyphens (-)
• Not allowed: uppercase letters, spaces, underscores, dots in the label, special characters
• Cannot start or end with a hyphen: -name.kin and name-.kin are rejected
• Cannot start with a digit: 007.kin is rejected
• Must end in .kin: only this TLD is supported
• Subdomains cannot be registered directly: blog.myname.kin is not a registerable apex name — you register myname.kin and add blog as a subdomain label in your zone file

Name	Valid?	Reason
myapp.kin	✅
my-cool-site.kin	✅
saif123.kin	✅
MyApp.kin	❌	Uppercase not allowed
my_app.kin	❌	Underscores not allowed
-name.kin	❌	Cannot start with hyphen
007.kin	❌	Cannot start with digit
blog.myname.kin	❌	Not an apex name

Reserved names

These names are permanently locked and cannot be registered:

test, example, invalid, localhost, local, onion, arpa, null, none, zero, corp, lan, internal

Additionally, certain infrastructure names (docs.kin, seed.kin, etc.) are reserved for network use until Phase 2.

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How long does registration take?

Registration time depends on your name's length. Shorter names require more VDF iterations to prevent squatting:

Name length	Approximate time
2 characters	~30 days
3 characters	~24 days
4 characters	~15 days
5 characters	~1 day
6 characters	~12 hours
7 characters	~2.5 hours
8–10 characters	~2 hours
11–17 characters	~1.5 hours
18–20 characters	~1 hour
21–62 characters	Baseline (hardware target)
63 characters	Randomized (63 seconds to 63 millennia)

Your CPU runs at full load during VDF

This is normal and expected. The computation is single-threaded and will saturate one CPU core for the entire duration. Do not close the daemon.

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Option A: Register via the Desktop App

1. Open Kinetic Desktop → Names section
2. Type your name in the Register field (e.g. myapp.kin)
3. Click Register
4. A progress bar appears showing VDF computation in real time
5. When progress reaches 100%, your name is live — the daemon has already broadcast it to the network
6. Go to the Names section, select your name, and add your DNS records
7. Click Save & Publish to push the records live

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Option B: Register via the CLI

kinetic name register myapp.kin

Check progress:

kinetic name info myapp.kin

When registration completes, add DNS records by editing the zone file:

~/.local/share/kinetic/zones/myapp.kin.json        # Linux
~/Library/Application Support/kinetic/zones/myapp.kin.json  # macOS
%LOCALAPPDATA%\kinetic\zones\myapp.kin.json         # Windows

Then publish:

kinetic name publish myapp.kin

Verify it is live:

dig @127.0.0.1 myapp.kin A

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What happens during registration

The daemon runs the full pipeline automatically:

1. Fetches drand randomness — a public randomness beacon used to seed the VDF computation
2. Generates a commitment — a blind hash of your name + randomness, published to the DHT before the VDF is done (prevents front-running)
3. Computes the VDF — CPU-intensive, takes hours depending on name length
4. Broadcasts the commitment — announces to the network that you've started
5. Waits 32 seconds — a mandatory maturation window for the commitment
6. Publishes the registration — submits the full signed proof to the DHT

Only step 3 takes a long time. Everything else is fast.

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If someone else registers the same name first

The commitment system protects against front-running: your commitment is published before anyone can see your full proof. If two users commit to the same name simultaneously, the network resolves the conflict by VDF difficulty — the proof with more iterations wins.

In practice, conflicts on names longer than 4 characters are extremely rare.

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After registration

Once registered, your name appears in kinetic name list (CLI) or in the Names dropdown (desktop app). Registration leaves an empty zone — no DNS records are published yet.

To make your name actually resolve to something:

1. Edit your zone file or use the desktop app's Names editor
2. Add at least one record (e.g. an A record pointing to your server's IP)
3. Publish the zone

See DNS Records for the full record format reference.