Handles.org partnered closely with X for several months, working directly with their product, engineering, safety, and operations teams to design and define how the marketplace should work. Our focus was to create a system that is safe, predictable, and fair — not a free-for-all or a pay-to-win environment.

The Problem

For years, social media usernames have existed with almost no governance:

• Valuable usernames locked behind dormant accounts

• Bots capturing newly-released names within seconds

• A thriving black-market of impersonation and risky “off-platform” swaps

• No legitimate process for brands, creators, or individuals to secure the names they need

X alone has roughly 21 million dormant usernames — a huge pool of value that, if released without structure, would be immediately overrun by bots and bad actors.

To avoid this, X needed a controlled system that balanced opportunity, safety, fairness, and platform integrity.

Our Role

Handles.org’s remit was simple: help X build a trusted, operationally sound marketplace that prevents abuse and ensures usernames go to legitimate users with a genuine need for them.

We helped structure the product around a clear guiding principle:

Fairness and platform integrity come before revenue.

This shaped every decision — from who can participate, to how bids work, to how transfers are secured.

Why This Matters

Social platforms have needed a safe, transparent way to allocate identity assets for more than a decade. The Handle Marketplace gives users a legitimate route to secure the names that represent them, without relying on bots, loopholes, or back-channel deals.

Just as domain marketplaces became an essential layer of the early internet, structured username marketplaces will shape the next era of digital identity.

X is the first major platform to build this properly, and Handles.org is proud to have helped establish this new standard.

This is only the beginning of a system that will reshape how digital identity is allocated and protected.