The problem of appraising the value of you own name (and .eth domain snipers)

in #cryptocurrency7 years ago (edited)

I recently tried to purchase my surname as a domain name for ethereum adresses.

If you don't know what I'm talking about read this:
https://ens.domains/

The system works like this

  1. Some one starts an auction for a domain name. For example steem.eth

  2. The auction is then open and any one can bid. Min bid is 0.01 ether.

  3. After some time (5 days i think) you need to reveal how much you bid. If you are the highest bidder that reveals his bid after the reveal time ends. you have won. However you will only have to "pay" (lock up) a value equal to the second highest bidder.

  4. Claim your domain (if you won).

This is essentially a sealed-bid second-price auction which is by many considered a fair form of auction because in theory it should naturally incentivise people to bid the maximum price they are willing to pay for an item. Hence giving the item to the seller who values it the most. Read more about it here, and about second price auction here

The problem

The problem was that there are some people who listens to new domain name auctions and then bids a high price, in hopes to sell the domain to the original bidder with a profit (domains snipers).

When i complained about this the (rational) response was that i should have bid my true value, meaning the max amount i would be willing to pay for that domain. And i would not have been unhappy. Fair enough but...

Is it that simple?

  1. People in general are unexperienced with this form of auction and do not follow the implied rules that makes sealed-bid second-price auctions fair. Hence they act irrationally and start auctions with the minimum amount required (0.01 eth).
    • Proposed solution here is to educate people, however i still think a substantial amount of people will not take the time to understand the concepts of sealed-bid second-price auction.
  1. Appraising the value of your surname is hard. Domain names are for convenience, they make addresses easier to remember. In some business cases that value is fairly easy to determine: "how much revenue can i expect to gain from having a good name". However how much is your surname worth to you? There is often no direct value generated by it. So what remains is how much you would like the future convenience of owning that shortcut? This is a really hard question to answer without a reference point (at least for me).

  2. Domain snipers listens on domains that people have already indicated value for (by opening an auction) and exploit the fact that people are unexperienced with both this form of auction and how much they truly value their surname. Only after losing the auction realising their true value is much higher.

Yes, what we should be thinking is: how much is my surname worth to me, but because or brain can't handle such an abstract problem we switch it to a simpler one: How little can i get away with paying. The concept is explained here

Also an interesting similar problem in regards to appraising how much something is worth to us in the future. This applies here because you will have the domain for at least a year, and maybe more.

I'm curious to hear what you would pay for their surname as a .eth domain. So please comment! (NB: Try not to see what other people have answered before you give your answer).

Sort:  

my surname is so rare that i will pay minimum possible price

Because of the domain name snipers, having a rare surname does not help you, they simply see that something that seems like a surname is being registered and bids for it. I though exactly the same as you and lost because of it (aka. i was unexperienced). If you had a second chance, how much would you bid?

the problem is that next week can come 10 more services like this with domain .ether or .ethereum
so at the moment 10 dollars

but how it works? i made a bid but i just installed that plugin for chrome and there is no eth at all. Does the bid still count?

No you need to buy ether first and transfer it to your wallet, and then pay the amount to the contract to start the auction. A small amount is used to pay for the transaction and the rest is locked down as long as you hold the domain (aka. can be recovered if you give up the name).

However be aware that the domain sniper i was up against had bid 400 USD. You might be luckier though if the domain snipers does not suspect that your domain is in fact a surname. As some domain registrars also starts decoy auctions.

Also if it is not that important to you, you could take a gamle on a lower price. But again how much is that domain really worth to you? Is it actually important to you?

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