Register a .dot Domain

Intermediate

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Introduction

Every published Polkadot Product is reached by a dotNS name, such as awesome.dot. That name is registered with dotNS, Polkadot's decentralized, on-chain name service. dotNS turns a human-readable name into the Product bundle it points at, and it is the lookup every Host runs when a user navigates to it.

TestNet names end in .paseo, not .dot

dotNS top-level domains are per network. On Paseo Next v2, the TestNet the Apps tooling targets by default, names are minted under .paseo: publish myproject57 and you get myproject57.paseo, served at https://myproject57.paseo.li. Whether you supply the bare label or the full name depends on the tool; see Choose a Name.

The registry (names, owners, and the content record each name points at) lives as contract state on Polkadot Hub. Resolution runs name → namehash → contenthash → CID: the name hashes to a deterministic key, the record's contenthash points at your bundle's CID, and the Host fetches and content-verifies the bundle before loading it.

Registration happens on chain, so the name rules below hold whichever tool you use. Three CLIs can register a name: the playground CLI folds it into a deploy, pad publishes a built bundle and registers its name in one command, and the dotNS CLI drives the registry directly. This guide explains how to choose a name your account is allowed to register, which path to take, and how to manage the name afterward.

Prerequisites

Before registering, ensure you have:

• Completed Install Desktop and Pair and Get TestNet Tokens; your account needs PAS to pay fees and any name deposit.
• One of the CLIs in Ways to Register installed. On the playground path that means pg login has paired it with your signer.
• A Product project ready to deploy, if you are registering as part of a deploy with playground or pad. Registering with the dotNS CLI needs no bundle. See Deploy Your App.

Choose a Name

A name is a bare label plus the network's TLD, as in johnsmith57.paseo. How you supply it depends on the tool: playground and the dotNS CLI take the bare label (johnsmith57) and append the TLD for you, rejecting a label that already carries a different one, while pad takes the full name.

Label Rules

A label must satisfy all of these, or registration is rejected before anything is submitted on chain:

• Length: 3 to 63 characters.
• Character set: lowercase letters, digits, and dashes (a-z, 0-9, -) only.
• Dashes: cannot start or end with a dash.
• Digits: allowed anywhere, in any quantity. A trailing run of digits no longer carries any special meaning.

Out-of-date tooling is stricter

Releases built against the previous label rules cap a trailing run of digits at two and reject a longer one, which the chain no longer does. @parity/dotns-cli lifted the cap in 0.9.0. If a label with three or more trailing digits is refused before anything is submitted on chain, update your tooling rather than changing the name.

Length Bands

Which band a name falls into depends on its length, counted as written. Digits count like any other character:

Length	Requirement
9 characters or longer	Open to everyone, with no personhood check
6 to 8 characters	Not sold on this path; earned in the Polkadot App
5 characters or fewer	Reserved for governance, not sold on this path

So johnsmith57 is open to anyone because it is 11 characters, and so is johnsmith at exactly nine. johnny and johnny01, at six and eight characters, cannot be registered on this path whatever personhood status the account holds, and neither can john at four. johnny can still be earned as a personhood name in the Polkadot App. johnny01 cannot be earned there either, because a gateway name never carries digits without a separator. Adding digits no longer lowers the tier a name demands: it only makes the name longer, which can move it into the open band.

The six-to-eight band is closed on this path by a governance switch in PopRules, which is off by default. While it is off, registering a name of that length fails with Short names are not for sale.

Every name this path admits pays the same refundable deposit, whatever its length. See the PopRules and Pricing reference for the bands and the deposit.

Personhood and the network

Proof of Personhood is obtained in the Polkadot App on your device; there is no CLI path to a tier. On this path, pick a name of nine characters or more, which registers with no personhood check. A name of six to eight characters is available only as a device or personhood name, such as johnny.42 or johnny, which is earned through the personhood gateway rather than registered here. See Get TestNet Tokens for how names, deposits, and personhood interact on TestNet.

Ways to Register

All three CLIs write to the same registry, so the name rules above apply identically to each. They differ in how much of the deploy they own:

Tool	Best for	What it does
playground	A first Product, and hackathons	Registers the name as one step of an interactive playground deploy
pad	Scripted or CI deploys of a built bundle	Uploads the bundle, registers the name if needed, and writes the content record in one command
dotns	Managing names on their own, with no deploy	Registration, lookups, content records, transfers, subnames, and escrow

The choice is not permanent. A name registered by any of them is an ordinary name owned by your account, and the others operate on it afterward.

Register with the playground CLI

When you run playground deploy and reach the domain prompt, enter the name you want:

  domain
    › johnsmith57█

From there, the CLI registers the name on chain. If you deploy with the phone signer, each on-chain step is a separate approval in the Polkadot App, in this order:

1. Reserve domain: Submits a dotNS commitment for the name without revealing it in the clear.
2. Finalize domain: Claims the name for your account.
3. Link content: Points the name's contenthash at your uploaded bundle's CID, so the name now resolves to your Product.

The ~60-second pause is expected

Between reserve and finalize, the deploy pauses for about 60 seconds. Most of that is the tooling waiting for the commitment to settle: the contract requires only that the commitment be six seconds old before the name is claimed. The two-step handshake is what stops a watcher seeing your desired name and racing to register it ahead of you. The deploy is not stuck.

An abandoned commitment expires after a day

A commitment is valid for one day. If a deploy fails between reserve and finalize and you come back later than that, the commitment is no longer claimable and the handshake starts over from the beginning.

Names are first come, first served. If the CLI reports that a name is already registered, choose another; if it reports that short names are not for sale, pick a name of nine characters or more. With the dev signer, these steps run without phone prompts; the deployed name is owned by the shared dev account rather than by you.

Register with pad

polkadot-app-deploy publishes a built bundle and registers its name in a single command, which suits a scripted or CI deploy:

npm i -g @parity/polkadot-app-deploy
pad ./dist johnsmith57.paseo --mnemonic "$MNEMONIC"

pad uploads the bundle to the Bulletin Chain, skipping unchanged blocks on repeat deploys, registers the name if you do not already own it, and writes the content record on Polkadot Hub. It also has a login mode: on TestNet a local worker registers the name and then transfers it to the signed-in account, so the deploy runs without phone taps unless you pass --no-transfer-to-signedin-user. pad does not read the dotNS keystore, so supply the key explicitly when you are not using login.

Keep the mnemonic out of your shell history

Pass the phrase through an environment variable, never as a literal on the command line, and never commit it. A deploy key that registers names controls them.

Node 22 or newer

pad requires Node 22+ and fails at startup on older versions with an unrelated-looking error. It also describes itself as a prototype reference implementation, so check pad --help against the version you installed before scripting around it.

Register with the dotNS CLI

The dotNS CLI registers a name on its own, with no bundle and no deploy involved. Reach for it when you want to hold a name before the Product is ready, script a batch of names, or debug a registration that failed.

From 1.0.0, the CLI targets Polkadot by default, where a registration spends DOT. To register on the TestNet this guide uses, set DOTNS_ENV=paseo-v2 or pass --env paseo-v2 on each command:

npm i -g @parity/dotns-cli
export DOTNS_ENV=paseo-v2
dotns register domain --help

Registration runs the same commit-reveal handshake described above, so expect a comparable pause whichever tool drives it. The CLI can also preview PopRules eligibility for a proposed name and account, showing the band and the deposit before you submit.

Check the flags against your version

The dotNS CLI's per-command flags are still being confirmed against the published package, which is why the CLI reference lists command families rather than a flag table. Run --help on the version you installed rather than copying flags from elsewhere; the PCF publishes its own build of this tool under a different scope, and the two are not interchangeable.

Update the Bundle a Name Points At

Registration binds the name to your account once. Publishing a new version of your Product does not re-register the name; it updates the name's contenthash to the new CID. Every path handles this the same way, and re-running against a name you already own skips the reservation steps, so later deploys need fewer approvals:

• playground: Re-run playground deploy against the same name.
• pad: Re-run the same command; it uploads only the changed blocks and rewrites the content record.
• dotns: Set the record directly with the CLI's content set command once you have the new CID, targeting the same network you registered the name on.

Because a name's content record is mutable and the owner can transfer or repoint it, treat a name as a pointer rather than a permanent identity. Code that consumes another Product should verify the contenthash it resolves at use time, not assume a name maps to the same bundle forever.

Manage Your Name

Everything past registration is the dotNS CLI's job. A deploy tool repoints the one name it just published; dotns operates on any name your account owns:

• Transfer: A name registered on this path is owned by a Polkadot Hub account and can be transferred to another account. A transfer changes only the owner; the name and its current content record are unchanged, so users keep seeing the same bundle until the new owner updates it. Proof of Personhood status and reservations do not transfer with the name. A device or personhood name cannot be transferred at all, and some moves carry a fee. See the transfer reference.
• Subnames: The dotNS CLI can register subnames under a name you own.
• Content records: The dotNS CLI can view and set a name's content record outside a deploy.

These CLIs are still moving

@parity/dotns-cli is in active development with breaking changes expected between versions, and pad describes itself as a prototype reference implementation. Both work today; treat the commands here as a snapshot and confirm them with --help before depending on them in a pipeline.

Where to Go Next

• Guide Deploy Your App

  ---

  The full deploy flow that registers your name and uploads your bundle in one pass.

  Deploy Your App

• Guide List Your App

  ---

  Once your name resolves, list your Product so others can discover it.

  List Your App

• Learn dotNS Reference

  ---

  The name mechanism, PopRules pricing, contract architecture, and transfer model in depth.

  Reference

Last update: October 15, 2026
| Created: September 2, 2026