ODNCA is the authority for decentralized naming on the ORDnet stack: the root rules, the standards, the conformance vectors, and the policies that make name.web3 mean the same thing everywhere. 651,483 canonical names live under these rules today — and every answer any ODNCA service gives can be recomputed by anyone from public data.
“Don’t trust us — recompute us.”
Its authority does not come from technology — anyone can run a resolver. It comes from one shared agreement: everyone resolves against the same published root rules.
The Root Registry: recognised namespaces and TLDs, activation heights, first-seen-wins among valid claims, sat-following ownership. A TLD’s birth is a published, chain-anchored decision — nobody can squat a TLD before it exists.
02 — THE STANDARDSEight adopted standards — from the name format to signed resolution, URI schemes, data channels, and registration — each frozen by conformance vectors: run them, match the answers, and you are conformant. No permission involved.
03 — THE POLICIESFair-use TLD stewardship that honours registered rights and moral claims, registrar recognition with published conduct rules, and a dispute policy where the crowd can warn but only review can block.
04 — THE PROOFThe full name state is periodically committed as an on-chain merkle root; every holder can obtain — and mint — an offline-verifiable Certificate of Ownership. The registry escrows itself, on the chain.
The separation is strict in both directions: the fact layer never censors, and the service layer never redefines validity.
ODNCA is documentation of reality, not invention. The stack it coordinates is live:
Today one resolver and one registrar operate, and ODNCA says so. The twelve adopted documents are the machinery of neutrality: frozen vectors anyone can run, keys anyone can verify, commitments anyone can audit — and a standing path for independent second operators. This ecosystem is designed so that its own authority is optional.
Track progress on the Transparency page →Twelve adopted documents govern everything on this site — versioned, dated, and downloadable in full.
Name format, resolution & signed answers, the Root Registry, URI schemes, data channels, registration, WHOIS.
THE POLICIES · 3TLD fair use, registrar requirements, dispute & abuse.
GOVERNANCE & TRUSTThe Board, procedures, the limits on both — and the trust framework.
THE SUMMARYAll twelve condensed into one official five-page reference for partners and rights holders.