Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and True Names have filed a lawsuit against registrars GoDaddy, Dynadot and Manifold Finance asking for the results of an auction for the sale of the .eth.link domain name to be cancelled.
Reason for judicial trial was a series of events in which True Names and the Ethereum Domain Name Service (ENS) behind it lost control of the .eth.link domain. For example, on August 25, registrar GoDaddy announced that True Names’ ownership of the .eth.link domain would expire on September 5.
“The eth.link domain registration expired on July 26, 2022. The domain is currently going through a standard expiration cycle and is expected to be returned to the registry on September 5th unless the current owner renews it.” says to the GoDaddy statement.
The conflict is that True Names, the former owner of the eth.link domain name, is associated with Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith, who is currently serving a prison sentence for hosting a blockchain education presentation in North Korea.
Griffith registered the .eth.link domain name to be used for .eth domain name resolution. .eth domains are based on the blockchain and web browsers do not allow them. Griffith’s idea was to make any .eth.link domain redirect to the appropriate website. For example, if a user wants to visit example.eth, they can type example.eth.link into the browser.
Previously, GoDaddy allowed a third party to renew the domain on behalf of Griffith, but this year refused to do so. On September 3, .eth.link was transferred to another registry, Dynadot LLC, which put the domain name up for auction. The .eth.link auction ended with a staggering $851,919 in favor of new resource owner Manifold Finance. ENS and Griffith intend to challenge the sale and transfer of the domain through the courts.
“The sale would shut down a valuable network and risk making it available to a host of attackers,” True Names said in a statement.
True Names also draws the attention of the court that GoDaddy unreasonably transferred the resource to Dynadot on September 3rd, while the domain expired only on September 5th. Dynadot said the payment from Manifold Finance has not yet been received and is expected soon.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently conducted a user survey on what the community thinks is a fair price to register and retain ownership of a 5-letter .eth address and own a premium ENS address.
Source: Bits
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