# Q&A uns.network

If you have any comments or requests, please open a topic on our forum.

# Identifiers

# What is a Decentralized Identifier ?

A Decentralized Identifier, also called "DID", is a digital identifier that is persistent, secure, and globally resolvable. Their creation does not require a central authority or intermediary. Every DID are cryptographically secured by private keys under the sole control of the owner.

UNIK tokens are Decentralized Identifiers (DID), recorder within the uns.network blockchain.

# What is a Human-Readable Identifier?

A Human-Readable Identifier is a unique string of digits and characters which can serve to identify explicity a ressource, to distinguish it from another one, and which can be easily readable, easy to remember and shareable by users.

Very common Human-Readable Identifiers are eMail Addresses, like 'bill@gmail.com'. They serve to identify eMail recipients within the overall e-Mailing network.

A @unikname is a Human-Readable Identifier. It's been designed to be universal and to serve to identify any kind of resource or recipient within any network or any traditional SaaS platform.

Examples of @uniknames are @bob, @bob#incomes, @alice#gift, or @John.Doe#files.

# Why are @unikname Identifiers trustworthy?

@unikname identifiers are considered Trustworthy identifiers because (1) they're Decentralized Identifiers under the sole control of their owners, (2) they're human-readable, easy to remember and to share without error, (3) they're protected against typo-squatting and phishing hacks thank to our Safe-Typo algorithm.

# What is typo-squatting?

Typo-squatting consists in changing one or many characters from an address to make it look visually identical. It is a malicious trick used with phishing websites as an example. The domain name looks like the same, but it is another website. Plus, such online page often replicates all the characteristic of an original site. As an example, we could imagine a fake “MyEtherWallet.com”, named “MyEtherWaIIet.com” (wrote with two i instead of l, a common case of typo-squatting), that copied all the front page of the original website but which the only goal is to steal people’s private key.

# What is Safe-Typo (c) ?

Safe-Typo is an algorithm we've designed to build Human-Readable identifiers that are communicable safely regarding typo-squatting risks and phishing hacks. Users have the guarantee that their @unikname cannot be counterfeit: no errors due to confusing characters, accents, homonyms, separators or not, character inversion, international charset... Every @uniknames and so every UNIK tokens are built with SafeTypo.

# Tokens

# Why are there two tokens?

Both serve their own purpose.

The UNS token is a technical token, used to secure the uns.network, and to reward Network Players for services provided to the Network.

The UNIK token is inseparable from every @uniknames. Technically UNIK is a NFT (Non-Fongible-Token), not like the UNS Token. UNIK Token is the unique representation of a @unikname identifier within our uns.network public blockchain. It's the technical link with your registry of personal data.

# What is a NFT and why is UNIK a Non-Fungible Token?

NFT (Non Fungible Tokens) tokens have remarkable properties:

  • They're unique and you have the guarantee that they're unique. No one can get the same @unikname as yours.
  • They're minted for eternity. Technically speaking we should say as long as the blockchain exists.
  • They've their own governance and ownership rules, and enable handling it without a centralized entity.
  • They're valuable on their own as a digital asset with intrinsic properties.

As the owner of a @unikname, you own its inseparable UNIK non-fungible token.

# What is the difference between a fungible and a non-fungible token?

Fungible means interchangeable. A fungible token is one that is not unique and is perfectly interchangeable with other identical tokens. To give you an example, one bitcoin could easily be replaced by another one bitcoin as they are both intrinsically identical. On another hand, a non-fungible token is unique by nature and its value is determined by its characteristics. Fiat money and most tokens and coins are fungible. All famous Ethereum ERC20 tokens are fungibles. Ethereum defines the ERC721 standard for non-fungible tokens.