This is a story where I am one of the early users of the Aptos Names Service (ANS) project. My article is not intended to encourage bashing the project or any requests for the project. THIS IS JUST AN ARTICLE AS THE TITLE SUGGESTS, ABOUT DECENTRALIZATION. The story goes like this:

If you are a recent participant in the crypto market, specifically in early 2022, you may know about Layer1 projects, Defi projects, and recent trends, then you may know about Aptos – a Layer1 blockchain project that operates using the Move language, with the goal of being a Solana Killer & ETH Killer(Here's the project if you don't know APTOS)

On October 19, 2022, Aptos mainnet launched and caused a huge buzz on social media at that time due to the backing of the Diem team and a massive airdrop for users. Like previous testers, I also received this gift and decided to invest it in a native dapp managed and launched by the Aptos development team called the Aptos Name Service. At that time, to mint a 3-character domain of ANS, you needed 80 APT, 4 characters required 40 APT, and 5 characters required 20 APT. At that time, I wondered why the ecosystem's domain was so expensive, but then I trusted the project and bought one domain. Everything would be completely normal like other domain projects until early 2023, when I wanted to renew my domain. After a search, I found that my domain could not be renewed. I went to Discord, asked, and received an answer from the project that there was currently no renewal function and would be added in the future:)). At this point, I had doubts about the project but still ignored them and continued to use it. But it seems that all my guesses and doubts are gradually becoming true.

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On March 8, 2023, which was yesterday, ANS announced on its Twitter that they want to increase the number of users, so they will reduce the fee for minting ANS domain names, with 3 characters being 20 APT, 4 characters being 10 APT, and 5 characters being 5 APT, which is divided by 4. This is also within my speculation because a domain that costs up to 80 APT is quite expensive and needs to be reduced. But what made me extremely disappointed is the second announcement of the project, that the domains created or purchased on the secondary market since January 1, 2023, will be compensated for one year:)). By this point, you probably understand my point somewhat, since January 1, 2023, so what about those who created in October, November, December?

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I and many early users, who created domains before 2023, asked in Discord, and the project team said that compensation would not be given to those who created domains before that. Later, they sent me a bunch of documents about the TERMS OF USE that they had prepared from February 2023 (i.e., 5 months after early users created domain names). Yes, a VALID set of documents was released after we, the early users who created domains 5 months ago, were required to comply with it (I can confirm to you that I and other early users have not seen this before, and we have not used our wallets to sign it).

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Now, I want to ask the project the following questions:

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1.Why weren't these changes announced or mentioned in the Roadmap for the community to know, but were automatically notified and changed (if the project can automatically change the price 4 times, then it is entirely possible for them to decrease it to 0.1 APT)?

2.Why did you let early users create such high-priced domain names? If you want more users and better service, why not make the domain creation fee 20 APT from the beginning?

3.Why do early users who created domain names in 2022 not receive any compensation and not even get their domain names extended?

1. You reduced the domain name price by 4 times, why only compensate for 1 year :))

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A blockchain project community always emphasizes decentralization and equality. However, projects are becoming more centralized, and users are losing their rights.* => My guess and that of early users is that they intentionally did not allow early users to renew or compensate for their beautiful domain names. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future, they require domain owners in 2022 to pay 200 APT to maintain them :)). But it must be said that a project with a professional team working like this makes me very disappointed.

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I HOPE MY ARTICLE AND MANY PEOPLE WILL HELP YOU AVOID SIMILAR PROJECTS.

Link aptos:https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/aptos/

Posts twitter apts name service:https://twitter.com/aptosnames/status/1633150630914306048