Beta Launch University: Purchasing a Handle

This is Part 2 of our educational Beta Launch series. If you missed part one, make sure to read about the required Phone Verification during our sale.

In this guide, we’ll detail the checkout process for users who might want to purchase a Handle from ADA Handle. Launch day is on Saturday, November 6th, at 2PM UTC.

As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, we use Phone Verification to queue customers into a fair, throttled access line — your number gets saved in a database (temporarily), and as long as certain conditions are met, you’ll receive an authentication code (exactly like 2FA) to add.

For international numbers, you’ll need to manually change the country via the flag icon. The number inputted will auto-format based on your selected country.

When it’s your turn you will receive an authentication code and will have 10 minutes to enter your authentication code before it expires. An expired authentication code will remove your phone number from the database and you’ll have to re-enter the queue — so don’t miss it!

After successfully authenticating, you’ll gain access to our Minting Portal. There are a couple of things to note here. First, some terms and what they mean:

1. Access Window: This is the 30 minutes you receive after submitting a valid authentication code.
2. Purchase Session: This is a 10-minute window you receive after reserving a Handle for purchase. During this time, no one else may purchase this Handle.
3. Expired Session: This is a session that has either hit the 10-minute limit or has had an invalid payment detected.
4. Total Sessions: In all, a user cannot submit more than 9 Purchase Sessions during an Access Window. In reality, this is more around 7–9, accounting for timing in between creating and expiring Purchase Sessions.

Once entering the Access Window, the flow is as follows:

1. You’ll receive a live preview of your NFT.
2. Searching for a Handle is as easy as typing it in. If it’s available, the Reserve button will turn green and you’ll be able to start a Purchase Session. In total, you cannot create more than 8–9 Purchase Sessions within a single Access Window.
3. Within the Purchase Session, you’ll have 10 minutes to make a valid payment. If you make an incorrect payment, your session will become invalid and you’ll have the option to clear it and start a new one.
4. Once a successful payment is made, your NFT will be added to the Minting Queue for processing. We batch together 10 mints every minute. Depending on demand, you should receive your Handle within a few minutes, but it could take up to a few hours.

There are a few nuances here, so let’s break down each step:

1. The Live Preview

The Live Preview is a dynamic image that represents your Handle name, its rarity, and your unique URL.

There is also a gold nugget: users who pre-reserved with Twitter were our strongest and earliest supporters. Because of this, we added a unique attribute to the NFT in the bottom left corner, in the pattern of “OG [entrance]/[total]”.

This unique identifier doesn’t provide additional functionality, but it does significantly increase the rarity of the Handle as being only 1 of 2,451 Handles with this attribute.

2. Searching for a Handle

Searching for a Handle is dynamic. Upon typing in your preferred Handle name, you’ll get a response from the server. There are a few possible scenarios, for instance, if the Handle is an SPO ticker, a known community member, or in a current session. However, if the Handle is available for purchase, it will tell you and you’ll then have the option to reserve a Purchase Session.

You’ll notice in the screenshot that the Minting Engine will also tell you how many available Purchase Sessions you have within your Access Window.

Twitter Handles

As mentioned above, if you are attempting to purchase your pre-reserved Twitter Handle, you’ll end up getting a screen that says the Handle is unavailable.

At this point, you have the option to unlock the session with Twitter. This again will open up an authentication window via the Twitter API. Once authenticated, the Minting Engine will check to see if your Handle and your Twitter username match.

If they do, the Handle will unlock and you’ll be able to Reserve a Purchase session.

3. The Purchase Session

Once you reserve a Purchase Session, you’ll be redirected to a corresponding tab that details the Purchase Session payment address, along with a tracker for your payment.

If you send the correct payment, you will get notified. The Purchase Session will remain locked, however, until it expires. This is to prevent unfair whale buying and limit the amount of Handles possible per Access Window.

If your payment is invalid, the Purchase Session will invalidate and you’ll have the option to manually clear it and start a new one.

Refund Policy

Keep in mind that refunds will be issued within 14 days, but not immediately, so make sure you send the exact amount. The technical reason behind this is two-fold:

1. Prevent doubling the network load with refund transactions.
2. Ensure all invalid payments are accurate before issuing them.

Good luck! If you have any questions, the best place to get support is through our Discord.