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A researcher Mason Keresty discovered the oldest domain name ETH smart contract from 2015 by a developer named Linagee.
Christened Linagee Name Registrar (LNR), the newly-discovered smart contract allows users to mint case-sensitive domain name non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for $0.70 and wrap them for $3-$4 for listing on popular secondary NFT marketplace OpenSea. The contract was deployed on Aug. 8, 2015, and has processed 414,112 transactions so far, according to Etherscan. NFT analytics site DuneAnalytics records 30,025 wrapped domain names. About 60 domains were minted in 2015.
The founder of GenerativeNFTs.io, Jim Dee, has said that the smart contract is not verified, which could explain why it remained under wraps for seven years. A non-technical person would only see meaningless bytecode.
Keresty co-launched the LNR Discord with developers on Oct. 2, 2022.
LNR follows the Ethereum Name Service in launching human-readable names as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. ENS, which started in 2017 as part of the Ethereum Foundation and later became a self-contained organization, solved the Web3 problem of needing to enter a string of letters and numbers to send a user an NFT or some crypto. Instead, by renting out ENS domain names for an annual fee, the destination wallet address could be replaced by a human-readable string ending in “.eth,” reducing the risk of sending tokens to the wrong address.
LNR already has domain name clubs like ENS
LNR domain names end in “.og,” similar to how Ethereum Name Services (ENS) domains end in “.eth.” NFT historian LeonidasNFT has already claimed the domain name Leonidas.og and has actively participated in the LNR community since the smart contract’s discovery.
Like the ENS 10K Club, communities have formed around LNR domains. The ENS 10K club is an exclusive community having ENS addresses 0-9999 ETH. LeonidasNFT gave away the LNR equivalent of a 10K address to Twitter user BuyseSandra on Oct. 1, 2022.
Linagee is a combination of the computer operating system Linux and Apogee, a game studio responsible for the Wolfenstein 3D video game.
It is unclear whether LNR domains have any utility beyond speculation. Unlike the Ethereum Name Service, which is currently compatible with most ETH wallets, there has been no word from the project developers regarding wallet support.
EtherID2015 cedes name service crown
Until the discovery of LNR domains, EtherID2015 was believed to be the oldest domain name project on Ethereum, launching on Nov. 30, 2015. Other early NFT collections include Punycodes2011 and Namecoin. BitDomains2011 was one of the earliest NFT collections to be established.
At press time, LeonidasNFT said they hope domain collectors will start to “nerd out” over historically noteworthy collections.
Currently, the highest sale price is for domain name ‘412’ which sold for 3 ETH.