Bellwren — Answers to common questions

What is a .wren handle?

A .wren handle is a short, human-readable name that stands in for a long wallet address on the Pellon chain. The open registry maps every handle to the address behind it, along with any avatars, social links, and other public records the owner decides to publish. Handles are portable and work in every app that reads the registry.

Records are stored on the chain rather than on our servers, so a handle keeps working even if Bellwren disappears tomorrow. Transfers are a single transaction, and the registry keeps the full history of every owner a name has had.

Are these just Bellwren accounts?

No. None of the pages you see here are Bellwren accounts. They are public entries in an open registry, and everything shown on them was added by the handle owner rather than by us. Because those records are pulled straight off the chain, a page can hold material we have not reviewed and that is not right for every reader.

Why would I want a handle?

Wallet addresses on the Pellon chain run to 42 characters and nobody remembers them. A handle such as .wren or bw.id lets you send and receive value by typing a name instead, and it travels with you between apps rather than living inside one of them. Your free bw.id handle, issued through Bellwren Wallet, also resolves on every network we support, so a single name is enough no matter where the balance happens to sit.

What's the difference between a .wren and bw.id handle?

A bw.id handle is a registry entry that also forwards anyone who types it into a browser to the matching public page on handles.bellwren.xyz. It is free for Bellwren Wallet holders, whereas a .wren handle carries a registration price plus the usual network fee. Both are written to the same open registry.

You can hold both at once and point them at the same address. Most people start on a free bw.id handle and add a .wren name later when they want something shorter to say out loud.

How do I claim a bw.id handle for free?

You can claim your free bw.id handle from the Bellwren Wallet mobile app or from the browser extension. If you would rather work through it step by step, our setup guide covers the whole flow.

How do I buy a .wren handle?

You can register a .wren handle at any registrar that reads the open registry, including the one built into Bellwren Wallet. Pricing is set by the registry rather than by us and renews once a year, so budget for the renewal alongside the first registration.

Names of three characters or fewer are priced well above the standard rate, simply because so few of them exist. Everything from five characters up renews at the flat rate, currently 18.40 a year plus whatever the network charges that day.

Do I get a public profile page too?

Yes. A handle is more than a nickname for your address — it carries an avatar, a short bio and links out to wherever else you post, all held as records that only you are able to change.

Every field is optional. Leave the whole page empty and the handle still resolves to your address — nothing is published to the registry until you write it there yourself.

Why is handles.bellwren.xyz in beta?

We opened the registry to free bw.id handles last spring, and the response told us people wanted somewhere to actually look one up. Public pages are the next step in that work. What is live today is deliberately plain and still missing pieces we intend to build, but it already resolves every handle in the registry, loads in under a second on a cold cache, and lets anyone browse without making an account first.

Search, collection views and a way to verify links back to the accounts you already run are the three things we hear about most, and all three are in progress. Beta means we may still change how pages look and what they show.