Design a Blockchain Domain Squatting Resolver

Problem statement

Design a Blockchain Domain Squatting Resolver: a system layered on top of a blockchain naming service (ENS-style .eth, Unstoppable Domains .crypto/.x, Solana Naming Service) that lets a trademark holder or brand contest a name they believe was registered in bad faith, runs a structured arbitration, and — if the claimant wins — enforces the verdict on-chain by reassigning or revoking the name from the registrant.

The core tension is that a naming service is append-friendly and self-custodial: whoever controls the registrar token (usually an ERC-721 NFT or equivalent) controls the name. Traditional DNS resolved squatting through UDRP, where registrars agreed contractually to honor ICANN-accredited panel decisions. On-chain there is no default registrar-as-enforcer; the registry is a smart contract and the owner key is sovereign. So the resolver must create a legitimate, verifiable path from a legal finding to a state change in a contract that was designed to resist exactly that change.

This is not a generic ticketing system. It is a safety-critical property transfer: the outcome irreversibly moves a valuable digital asset between parties. Therefore the design must separate three planes that weaker answers collapse together:

1. Evidence plane — intake, storage, integrity, and chain-of-custody for trademark proofs and registration metadata.
2. Adjudication plane — selection of an arbitrator panel or specialized DAO, structured voting, anti-bribery guarantees, and appeal.
3. Enforcement plane — the on-chain module that holds a controller role over the registrar and executes the final verdict through a timelock.

A strong answer keeps these planes separate so that a corrupted panel cannot silently move assets, an unavailable indexer cannot corrupt evidence, and a losing registrant can never front-run the enforcement transaction.

Public baseline versus design assumptions

Public evidence shows the category is real. Unstoppable Domains reports 3M+ minted domains and operates a published Unstoppable Domains Dispute Resolution Policy modeled on UDRP. ENS reports 2M+ `.eth` names with governance by the ENS DAO. ICANN's UDRP, adopted in 1999, has produced well over 100,000 decided cases, with WIPO alone handling roughly 6,000 complaints per year. These are cited public figures used as context, not requirements for our fictional resolver.

For capacity planning this answer explicitly assumes a mature deployment: 120,000 names under resolver jurisdiction, 30,000 filings per year, 12,000 advancing to full arbitration, a panel of 200 staked arbitrators, and a 5× event peak around a high-profile brand enforcement wave. Unless tied to a citation, every number is a stated design assumption, target, or budget.

The four architectural planes

1. Intake plane: eligibility screening, fee bonding, evidence upload, duplicate and prior-art detection.
2. Evidence plane: content-addressed storage (IPFS/Arweave), on-chain hash anchoring, trademark-registry oracle attestations.
3. Adjudication plane: panel or DAO selection, commit-reveal voting, stake-and-slash incentives, appeal windows.
4. Enforcement plane: arbitration controller contract, timelock, registrar transfer or burn, audit trail.

Keeping enforcement as its own plane means the decision and the execution are distinct, reviewable, and individually gated. That separation is the single most important architectural claim of this answer.