Buying & Selling Names
Names are NFTs, so they trade on Stargaze exactly like art does — listings, offers, and reserve auctions. Two characteristics distinguish names from an ordinary collectible, and both are covered on this page.
Browse them all at stargaze.zone/m/names.
Buying a name
Buy a listed name
Open the Names collection and find the name — use the search and the collection filters.
Open the name's page and check its expiry (see below).
Click Buy Now and approve the transaction.
The name lands in your wallet immediately.
Make an offer on any name
A name doesn't have to be listed to receive an offer:
Open the name's page.
Click Make Offer, enter your amount and expiry.
Confirm.
Your offer sits there until the owner accepts it, you cancel it, or it expires. You can see all your open offers under Profile → Offers.
Bid in an auction
Some names are sold by reserve auction instead of a fixed price. Place a bid and it's held in escrow; if someone outbids you, you're refunded automatically.
Checking the lease before you buy
A name that has expired is still tradeable. The marketplace can only see who holds the NFT — it cannot see the lease. So an expired name can be listed, bought and paid for, and then re-registered by somebody else, and there is no refund. Always check the expiry before you buy or bid.
Before you commit to a name, confirm which state it's in:
Registered
Yes — you inherit the remaining lease. Renew it when you're ready.
Grace
Risky. The name has expired and stopped resolving. It's still renewable, so renew it immediately after buying — you have until the grace period ends.
Premium / Expired
Not advisable. Anyone can register that name directly from the Names page, and doing so takes it out of the buyer's hands. Register it yourself instead of buying it.
The quickest check is the owner's profile: open Profile → Names for the wallet selling it and read the Expires column and its badge. A Grace or Expired badge is your warning.
The same applies to bidding. If a released name is re-registered while your bid is live, the auction is cancelled and your bid is refunded in full — you lose no money, but you don't get the name.
Selling a name
List it for sale
Go to Profile → Names and open the name.
Click List for Sale, set your price, and confirm.
The name appears in the Names collection for anyone to buy.
Accept an offer
Open the name's page, review the offers, and click Accept. Funds arrive in your wallet and the name goes to the buyer.
Run an auction
Create a reserve auction from the name's page if you'd rather let the market find the price. You set the reserve, the duration, and optionally a buy-now price.
Listing clears your records
Listing a name moves it into escrow, and moving a name clears everything attached to it — the address it points at, its profile picture, its banner, and all five links. Cancelling the listing returns the name, but not those settings. You'll have to set them up again.
Listing is therefore reversible for the name but not for your profile setup. Take that into account before listing a name you use as your identity.
While a name is listed or in a live auction its Edit button is disabled — the chain won't accept edits from you while the marketplace is holding it. Renew still works throughout, so a listed name can never expire out from under you for lack of access.
Transferring without selling
To send a name to another wallet — a gift, or moving it to your own hardware wallet — open the name's page and use Transfer.
A transfer clears the same settings as a listing. The new owner gets a clean name and sets it up themselves.
What a sale costs
Fees are the standard Stargaze marketplace fees, paid by the seller:
Marketplace fee
2%
Royalty
5%
Gas
fractions of a cent
On a 100 ATOM sale the seller receives 93 ATOM.
The lease itself is untouched by a sale — no fee, no reset, no renewal. See Renewing a Name.
What makes a name valuable
The market decides, but the usual drivers are:
Length. 3- and 4-character names are scarce, and priced that way at registration too.
Memorability. Real words and clean handles beat random strings.
Relevance. Project names, ticker symbols, community terms.
Time left on the lease. A name with eight years on it is worth more than the same name with three weeks.
Check comparable sales in the collection's activity feed before pricing anything.
Next steps
Renewing a Name — the first thing to do after buying
Managing Your Name — set it up once it's yours
Fees — how marketplace fees work generally
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