[unlimited_power]

We are still working on the exact mechanics (open to suggestions!), but the simple first model is:

- The price starts at 0 and people bid it up to the market value

- If someone makes a bid B1, then someone makes a next bid B2 = B1 + D, then person 1 receives (B1 + D/2) and the remaining D/2 gets paid as fees to network (and thus become shareholder dividends)

- This incentivizes people to bid up the price to what they consider the market value, because of the extra portion they receive when they are outbid

- This also disincentivizes squatting because you will pay more for buying and selling the domain than you would have received as network dividends had someone else just bought the domain

[michaelt]

So if I buy a cheap unused nonsense word domain (say wikipedia.org) and turn it into a valuable domain by making a popular website many people visit and link to, 'the network' gets to shake me down because wikipedia.org is worth $20,000,000 now instead of the $20 I paid for it?

And as an end user, I don't know if visiting or e-mailing wikipedia.org will take me to an encyclopedia or a cybersquatter or a porn site?

Who exactly benefits from this system, except for 'the network'?

[oco101]

Not sure what you mean exactly but it works like that : Once you buy your domain at 20$ is is yours and you do whatever you want with it. The bidding auction applies only the first time you buy it nobody can touch your domain name one you purchased it.