Register your name
Search a name, register it in two transactions, point it at your addresses, prove you control them, and set it as your primary — a step-by-step walkthrough on app.arcns.io.
Getting a name takes a few minutes. Everything happens at app.arcns.io — you'll need a wallet on Arc testnet and a little USDC, which on Arc is both the gas asset and the registration price (see Fees).
Open the app and sign in
Go to app.arcns.io and connect the wallet you want your name tied to — an injected wallet such as MetaMask, or sign in with email, Google, X, Discord, GitHub, Telegram or a passkey to get an embedded wallet. This wallet will own the name, so use one you control and intend to keep. The app switches you to Arc testnet (chain id 5042002) when you act.
Search for a name you like
Type the name you want — say you — into the search box. The app tells you whether @you, you.arc and you.circle are available and what each costs, read live from the price oracle. Shorter names cost more (see Fees). If it's taken, try a variation until you find one that's free.
Names are letters, numbers and hyphens only (a-z, 0-9, -; 1 to 32 characters; no hyphen at the edges or back-to-back, not all digits) — no emoji and no lookalike symbols from other alphabets. That's deliberate: it stops anyone from registering a name that looks identical to yours. More on that in Trust & transparency.
Register it — two transactions, a minute apart
Pick what you're registering as (Human, Merchant or Org — this is recorded with a @handle; Agent is defined on chain but not offered in the app yet) and confirm. Registration is commit-reveal: the first transaction commits a hash of your name, address and a random secret so nobody can front-run you; after at least 60 seconds of chain time (and within 24 hours) the second transaction reveals and registers it, paying the one-time price shown. The app keeps your pending commitment in the browser between the two steps and tells you when it's ready. From that moment @you is yours — no renewals, ever.
Point it at your addresses
Open your name and add the addresses you want it to resolve to — your Arc address, and optionally your Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana addresses. Now when someone sends to @you, a name-aware wallet looks up the record for the chain they're on. A chain you haven't added is an explicit "no record", never a guess.
Prove you control them
Verify each address so it shows as verified: the app walks you through a control proof for each chain — a signature from that address (or an on-chain call for a smart-contract wallet) for Arc and Ethereum, and a signed challenge plus public key for Bitcoin and Solana. Verified records are the ones wallets can trust — see Verified records.
Any later change to a record clears its verified flag, and a change of owner makes every old record unreadable. What is shown as verified was proven by the current owner for the current address — nothing else.
Add a profile (optional)
Add a website, a description, an avatar and other text records. This is what turns @you from a routing label into an identity people recognize.
Set it as your primary name
Mark @you (or you.arc) as your primary name. This is the reverse link: explorers and apps that integrate ArcNS will show your wallet as that name instead of a raw address — but only while it forward-confirms, so a stale primary is never shown.
That's it
You now have a name that works across chains, records you can prove, and an identity apps can display. From here you might want to:
Get paid to your name
Share the QR code and payment link that come with your name so anyone can pay you by scanning or tapping.
Set up recovery & locks
Give yourself a way back in if you lose access, and a way to freeze a handle in an emergency.
Add a subname
pay.you.arc for payments, docs.you.arc for a project — under the name you already own.
Understand the fees
What you paid, why shorter names cost more, and how the price climbs over time and volume.
Looking someone up? The search on app.arcns.io works two ways: type a name to check if it's free to register, or look up a name that already exists to see whose it is and what it points to — with the namespace and registry shown alongside. It's how you find a name to register, and how you check one before you trust it.
Registering from a script or an agent? The same registration is available without a wallet on Arc through registration-as-a-service: POST /raas/register, paid once over x402, minted to your address. For your own transactions, the SDK's buildCommit / buildRegister return the unsigned calls, and the MCP server's prepare_register does the same for an agent.
Questions
Questions: [email protected].