Subdomains
If you own alice.gwei, you can create pay.alice.gwei, blog.alice.gwei, or any other
subdomain for free, paying only gas.
Creating subdomains
From your name’s manage page, open the Subdomains tab, enter a label, and mint. You can mint to yourself or directly to any other address. Each subdomain is a full ERC-721 token with its own records, its own avatar, and its own subdomains.
A few rules:
- Only the current owner of the parent can create its subdomains.
- Labels follow the same normalization rules as top-level names.
- Names can nest up to 10 levels deep.
Subdomains do not expire, exactly
A subdomain has no expiry date of its own. It stays alive as long as its parent chain is
alive: if alice.gwei expires and is not renewed, every name under it stops resolving too.
Epochs: what happens when a parent changes hands
When an expired name is re-registered by a new owner, the contract bumps the name’s
epoch. Every existing subdomain records the epoch of its parent at mint time, so a
subdomain from the previous owner’s era is automatically invalidated. It no longer
resolves and shows as [Invalid].
The same mechanism lets a parent owner reclaim a subdomain: re-registering the same label burns the old token and mints a fresh one, invalidating anything the previous holder had built under it. Keep this in mind if you buy a subdomain: the parent owner retains this power. Buy subdomains only under parents whose owners you trust, or whose incentives are aligned, such as a community selling subdomains as memberships.
Transferring
Subdomains transfer like any ERC-721. The epoch mechanism above is unaffected by transfers; only expiry and re-registration of the parent, or reclaiming, invalidate a subdomain.
Want to charge for subdomains under your name instead of giving them away? See Selling subdomains.