Realms

A Realm is a top-level Atomicals name, owned as a non-fungible Atomical. Whoever controls the output carrying that Atomical controls the name.

Realm hierarchy and claim states. A top-level Realm owns the rules for names beneath it. Subrealms are claimed against those rules and can nest further. Every name in the tree is in one of four states: a verified winner that the rules awarded, a pending candidate that has not resolved, a losing candidate that another claim beat, or a rejected claim that failed a rule. Only a verified winner may be presented as owned.

Realm hierarchy and claim states

A top-level Realm owns the rules for names beneath it. Subrealms are claimed against those rules and can nest further. Every name in the tree is in one of four states: a verified winner that the rules awarded, a pending candidate that has not resolved, a losing candidate that another claim beat, or a rejected claim that failed a rule. Only a verified winner may be presented as owned.

Claiming

A Realm is requested inside an nft mint payload as request_realm. The request is a candidate until the rules resolve it into a verified winner. See candidates and winners.

Reference commands: mint-realm <realm>, get-realm, realm-info, find-realms, summary-realms, resolve. See the CLI reference.

What a Realm gives you

It gives you	It does not give you
A globally allocated name	Any claim to a trademark or identity
The right to define Subrealm rules	Control over what people do with similar names
A resolvable destination for Paynames	Any guarantee that a lookalike is not deceiving someone
A transferable Atomical	Any protection against confusable characters

Ownership and transfer

Ownership is control of the output carrying the Realm Atomical. Transferring it is an ordinary non-fungible transfer. Losing the output loses the name.

Practical consequences:

• Never hold a valuable Realm in a wallet that can spend its output for fees.
• Never leave a Realm on an output shared with other Atomicals. Splat first. See splat and mixed outputs.

Resolution and search

Resolution turns a name into the Atomical that holds it. It is computed at a chain position, so it can change after a reorg. Always record the height and generation a resolution came from.

The Universe read model exposes realm resolution, hierarchy, and Subrealm listing. See NFT and Realm API.

Read next

Topic	Page
Child names under a Realm	Subrealms
Using a Realm as a payment destination	Paynames
How claims and payments are evaluated	Claims and rules
Unicode, normalisation, and confusable names	Unicode and IDNA
Listing and buying names	Marketplace