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RNS glossary

Overview​

This reference page defines the key terms used in the Ronin Name Service (RNS).

Controller​

The account that edits the records of a name. The controller may be changed by the registrant or controller.

Label​

An individual element of a name, such as hello in hello.ron.

Labelhash​

The keccak256 hash of an individual label.

Name​

An RNS identifier, such as hello.ron.

Namehash​

The algorithm for generating a cryptographic hash from an RNS name. It takes a name as input and produces a node.

Node​

The output of the namehash algorithm, used to uniquely identify a domain name in RNS.

Owner​

The owner of a name is the entity referenced in the RNS registry's owner field. Owners may transfer ownership, set a resolver or time-to-live (TTL), and create or reassign subdomains.

Registrar​

The registrar is an RNS component responsible for allocating second-level .ron domain names. This is essentially a subdomain registrar for the TLD (top-level domain) .ron. When you register a .ron name, the registrar issues you an ERC-721 NFT.

The owner of that NFT is also called the registrant or owner of that name. It can be used to reclaim ownership of the name in the core registry—in other words, the registrant can overwrite the controller.

Architecturally, the registrar is located in the RNS Unified contract.

Registration​

A registration is a registrar's record of a user's ownership of a name. This is distinct from the owner field in the registry. The registrar contract stores information about registrations, including expiry dates and fees.

Registrant​

The owner of a registration. If necessary, the registrant may transfer the registration, set the controller, and reclaim ownership of the name in the registry.

Registry​

The core component of RNS, the registry maintains a mapping from domain names to the owner, resolver, label, expiry, and the parent domain. All RNS lookups start by querying the registry. Architecturally, the registry is located in the RNS Unified contract.

Resolver​

A resolver is a contract that maps a name to a resource (for example, cryptocurrency addresses or content hashes). Resolvers are pointed to by the resolver field of the registry.

RNS Unified​

The core contract combining the registry and registrar components.