Emercoin
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Emercoin is an early blockchain similar to Namecoin and Peercoin.[1][2] It was launched in December 2013 and uses a hybrid PoW and PoS consensus approach. It hosts a broad range of services, of which its decentralized domain name service is most relevant to NFT collectors. While Namecoin offers .bit top level domains (TLDs), Emercoin supports .coin, .bazar, .lib, and .emc TLDs. Emercoin assets are relatively similar to Namecoin and are categorized by collectors as either normal domains, image domains (either via a metadata link or encoded via base64), and punycodes.
Emercoin NFT basics
Collectors need to install the Emercoin core wallet to register and renew names (note that the mobile wallet does not work at the time of writing this wiki). It will take 1–2 days to fully sync the chain. In contrast to Namecoin's bit domains or EtherID domains, users can chose to register domains for decades by paying a slightly higher registration fee. For instance, registering a typical domain for 30 days costs 0.0002 EMC, while a registration for 30 years costs 0.0009 EMC, which is fractions of a cent given the current EMC price of $0.033. If a user puts more information in the name’s value, registration fees goe up (30 years of 20kb of data equates to 0.017 EMC for instance). The registration process is explained in this YouTube video. You need a very modest amount of EMC for registering and renewing Emercoin and EMC can be acquired at CoinEx.
Emercoin’s explorer allows for filtering by type (most relevant are "dns:"), name, and value. The value stores metadata like in the case of Namecoin assets. The explorer shows the block height of the last registration and the expiration's block height. However, it does not show the first registration date. Either you use the NFT Relics Database or Emercoin Core’s name_history function. For instance, you need to type name_history(“d:emc.cc.st” true) into Emercoin Core’s console. The true option is necessary to display the full name history.
Note that there is no decentralized exchange to buy/sell/trade Emercoin names (even though experienced users could enter an atomic swap[3]). Additionally, Emercoin assets are not yet supported by Emblem Vault even though they will be integrated soon. Hence, there are no vaulted Emercoin assets available on the secondary market. As a workaround, the Emercoin NFT Discord mod NonFungibleMate offers a voucher-based workaround for Emercoin NFTs. Collectors can buy vouchers on OpenSea, which can be redeemed for the underlying Emercoin NFT from NonFungibleMate. Collectors should be aware of the risks associated with doing OTC trades before participating in the OTC markets.
Supply and rarity
First NFTs (names)
Typically, the first assets on a protocol will have test characteristic. Emercoin is not an exception. The first name, d:emc.cc.st, was registered on July 26, 2014. The further names were all test names and were issued a few weeks later. None of them are (DNS) domains as discussed above. Note the UNIX time stamp to rank the names that were registered within the same block.
First .coin domains
The first DNS-domains were mainly .coin and .emc domains. Since the .coin domains have been the most popular among collectors (the .emc ones being intended specifically for use within the Emercoin protocol), this wiki focusses mostly on .coin domains. emer.coin is the first domain on Emercoin and was registered on September 22, 2014. bit.coin and btcsec.coin were also registered moments later in the same block.
The next two domains (emergentor.coin and yarowrath.coin) are related to a browser-based game and one of the co-founders of Emercoin (Vladimir Frolov). The name.coin, peer.coin, lite.coin, and doge.coin all refer to other popular blockchain protocols at the time.
Punycodes
As with Namecoin and other protocols, users registered names / domains based on punycodes. However, Emercoin is slightly different in that it has multiple TLDs so the same punycode can exist under multiple TLDs.
Between 2015 and 2019 a total of 1,268 punycodes were registered. Of those, 605 are unique punycodes, while the rest are duplicates under multiple top level domains (or non-standard names).
Registration varies drastically by year with 995 punycodes being registered in in 2016 and none being registered in 2017.
There is a single punycode from 2015, dns:xn- -jagieo-7dba.bit (note this is an unsupported .bit TLD domain). It was first registered on October 14, 2015. The encoded text is jagiełło, which relates to Władysław II Jagiełło who was the ruler of medieval Lithuania.
Images
Images can be attached to names and domains by adding a link to the name’s value or by encoding pictures with base64 or other encoding standards on-chain. The first on-chain art Emercoin NFT was registered on November 11, 2014 (far left in Figure 4). It is encoded with the name "StarRevenge.jpg". Based on research by punisher.eth, it is the seventh NFT with on-chain artwork on any chain.[4]
Other images are not encoded but added via a link. Early examples include the Emercoin logo, and the Folding@home logo.
Other Emercoin NFTs with links to images include the Linux penguin, the Rolex logo, or wine bottles. In the case of the Rolex logo, there are two names, dpo:Rolex Demka and dpo:Rolex Demo that were both registered on February 18, 2017 and point to a Wikipedia Rolex logo (total supply equals 2). In case of the wine bottles, there are different names, which all begin with dpo:Shuba (registered on March 27 and 29, 2017), that hold the same link to the picture with the wine bottle (total supply equals 51).