ENS Ends eth.link Domain After DAO Greenlights $300K Payment
Ethereum Name Service (ENS) developer Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is set to end Manifold Finance's dispute over ownership of the eth.link domain after approving a $300,000 deal for Manifold.
The ENS DAO vote ended on February 26 with about 88% approving the settlement – which saw ENS Labs drop the lawsuit and pay $300,000 to Manifold but get to keep the domain name. Meanwhile, 84% approved reimbursement of ENS Labs' $750,000 in legal fees.
The approved settlement ends an 18-month saga that saw ENS Labs Manifold and domain registrars GoDaddy and Dynadot sue in Arizona district court and win an injunction to stop the domain from being transferred.
ENS founder Nick Johnson said on the ENS DAO forum on February 13 that Maniford's settlement terms sought $300,000 from ENS Labs “with confidentiality and non-exclusion clauses.”
“In return, all parties are agreeing to dismiss the case and ENS Labs will retain the eth.link domain name,” he said.
ENS is the blockchain equivalent of the Domain Name System (DNS) that translates domain names like cointelegraph.com into IP addresses that can be accessed by browsers.
The two systems are not compatible, so ENS .eth uses the eth.link domain to create ENS-based domains.
According to early contributor Virgil Griffiths, his tenure expired in July 2022 and he was unable to renew it when he was sentenced to three months in prison for trying to help North Korea evade sanctions.
GoDaddy, where eth.link was registered, expired the domain, allowing the domain to be auctioned off by Dynadot in September 2022.
He was just denied by us.
Services returned upon completion of ownership transfer. #Ethereum #ENS
— Fold Finance (@foldfinance) September 3, 2022
That same month, ENS sued the trio and won a court order to stop the domain transfer because three of the company's parties failed to show up for a court hearing on the matter.
Related: Ethereum Name Service Open to Build Its Own Layer 2 – ENS Director
Months of legal wrangling followed, but in July 2023, Arizona District Judge John Tucci ordered Dynadot to open eth.link so that ENS could transfer its patents.
ENS and GoDaddy appear to have settled the saga and earlier this month partnered to link the .eth ENS domain to a traditional domain for free.
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