Prop 243: Stargaze Names Renewal Update

It has been a year since Stargaze Names launched, with significant adoption and use by the community (12k+ Names minted, by 6k+ wallets). Names have an inherently social aspect, fitting Stargaze’s essence very well.

Let’s recap what the Names proposal consists of, for Renewals and Annual Auctions :(https://commonwealth.im/stargaze/discussion/7401-stargaze-names-ibc-name-service-contract)

There is a 0.5% fee of the top bid, or minimum fee based on a number of characters. Right now, fees to mint a Name are the following:

5+ characters = 100 STARS 4 characters = 1,000 STARS 3 characters = 10,000 STARS

After reviewing the current setup for renewal, it becomes clear that the 0.5% fee will never be achieved unless the bid is very high (20k STARS bid for a renewal of 100 STARS, 2M STARS bid for a renewal of 10k STARS), leaving all renewals tied to the base mint fee depending on the character count. That means Name owners would have to pay the mint fee every year.

It could also be gamed towards making small bids to pay 0.5% instead of the current base mint fee.

Stargaze team would like to propose the following:

• Let everyone keep their Names without renewal if there are no bids.
• If there is a bid, the renewal fee would be 5% (instead of the original 0.5% proposed) of the top bid.
• Cap annual fee at 10k per year

That means the Names will remain with their owners as long as no bids are made, and will need a renewal only if there was a bid on it. This achieves the market-based approach vision for Names, instead of arbitrary renewal fees.

Currently, 274 Names would need to pay the renewal if this proposal passes. If this proposal does not pass, 12k+ Names (all) would pay the base mint fee renewal.