OpenAlias – LandChad.net

- -

The Problem

- Cryptocurrency can be unintuitive. - After all, look at this annoying Monero address of ours: -

- -

84RXmrsE7ffCe1ADprxLMHRpmyhZuWYScDR4YghE8pFRFSyLtiZFYwD6EPijVzD3aZiEpg57MfHEr1pGJNPXyJgENMnWrSh
-

- -

- It breaks up pages and looks ugly. When you copy and paste it to send money, you might be paranoid that you somehow added an extra character in there. - That's all around a bad user experience. -

- -

It would be nice...

- -

- It would be nice if we could just input someone's email address or maybe a website and send Bitcoin or Monero to that instead. - So instead of that long jumble, it would be easier to just type in someone's website or email and sending them money that way. -

- -

The Solution

The OpenAlias standards are just that. - It uses DNS settings, which you know something about, to link a website or an email address with a cryptocurrency address. - It allows someone to simply put landchad.net or chad@landchad.net as a payment recipient and that will direct to that long address above. -

- -

- The default Monero wallet and Bitcoin's Electrum are already compatible with OpenAlias, as are a growing group of wallet software. -

- -

Let's do it.

- -

Open up your domain registar and open up your DNS settings for the website you would like to add.

- -

- Open the TXT record section. - Now, create an entry with text like that below: -

- -

oa1:xmr recipient_address=84RXmrsE7ffCe1ADprxLMHRpmyhZuWYScDR4YghE8pFRFSyLtiZFYwD6EPijVzD3aZiEpg57MfHEr1pGJNPXyJgENMnWrSh; recipient_name=LandChad.net;

- -

Obviously change the address to your desired address and you may also give a proper name for yourself (this may be multiple words). - Note that the entry above is all one line. -

- -

- Now create a new TXT entry and input this text into the TXT Value input box. - Note here that I have create two entries: -

- -

- -

- One entry's "Host" is left empty, this will allow people to send Monero by merely typing landchad.net. -

- -

- The second entry has "chad" as the "Host"; this will allow people to send money to chad@landchad.net, i.e. - this is how you allow people to connect a Monero address with an email address. -

- -

Checking to see if it works...

- Let's check to see if it works. - In the Monero wallet, we can now type in landchad.net as a recipient: -

- -

- And once we press the "Resolve" button, it automatically turns into that address we gave to the DNS! -

- -

- -

- Now people can donate Monero to you without having to worry about QR codes or copying-and-pasting super-long public addresses! -

- -

Now with Bitcoin!

- -

- OpenAlias was originally developed for Monero, but since it's such a good idea, Bitcoin wallets have implemented it as well, so let's add some TXT entries for Bitcoin. - The OpenAlias TXT records have the same format, except for the xmr at the beginning is replaced with btc and obviously we use a Bitcoin address instead of Monero. -

- -

oa1:btc recipient_address=bc1q9f3tmkhnxj8gduytdktlcw8yrnx3g028nzzsc5; recipient_name=LandChad.net;

- -

Add the TXT entries in and save:

- -

- -

And we can then check that it's working by trying to send money to landchad.net in Electrum. - See that it automatically appends the address! -

- -

- And that's it. Now users can easily send your website or email address Bitcoin or Monero without having to worry about hard to read addresses and QR codes. -

- -