ENS and Manifold Finance reach $300k settlement, resolving legal dispute over eth.link domain.
The legal dispute between the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) developer and Manifold Finance over the domain eth.link is coming to a close with a $300,000 settlement approved by the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) of ENS. The vote, which took place on Feb. 26, saw an overwhelming majority of approximately 88% in favor of the agreement. As part of the settlement, ENS Labs will drop its lawsuit and compensate Manifold Finance with $300,000, while still retaining the rights to the eth.link domain.
Furthermore, 84% of the voters supported a reimbursement of $750,000 to cover ENS Labs’ legal fees. This settlement puts an end to an 18-month-long legal battle that started when ENS Labs filed lawsuits against Manifold Finance, GoDaddy, and Dynadot in an Arizona District Court. The court ruled in favor of ENS Labs and issued an injunction that prevented the transfer of the eth.link domain out of their ownership.
In a forum post on the ENS DAO site dated Feb. 13, ENS founder Nick Johnson explained that Manifold Finance’s settlement proposal included a demand for $300,000 from ENS Labs, as well as confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses. In exchange, Manifold offered to settle all disputes, leading to the dismissal of the lawsuit and allowing ENS Labs to maintain ownership of the eth.link domain.
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a system that assigns human-readable names to Ethereum wallet addresses, which are typically long and complex. The eth.link domain plays a crucial role as a bridge, enabling ENS domains, which are not recognized by the conventional Domain Name System (DNS), to be accessible through traditional web browsers. This is made possible through the use of EthDNS and EthLink functionalities, which allow standard internet protocols to access blockchain-based data and resolve .eth domains in traditional web browsers.
By adding .link to an ENS domain, users can access content associated with ENS addresses through conventional DNS pathways, making ENS domains function similarly to standard internet addresses.
The dispute over the eth.link domain began when it expired in July 2022. Virgil Griffith, a former Ethereum developer and early contributor who owned the domain, was unable to renew it due to his imprisonment for attempting to help North Korea evade sanctions. GoDaddy, the registrar where eth.link was initially registered, allowed the domain to expire, leading Manifold Finance to acquire it at an auction on Dynadot in September 2022.
ENS Labs then took legal action against the parties involved and obtained a court order to halt the transfer of the domain after the defendants failed to attend the court hearing. The legal battle continued until July 2023, when Arizona District Judge John Tuchi ruled in favor of ENS, ordering Dynadot to unlock eth.link for ENS to transfer its ownership. Following this, ENS and GoDaddy reconciled and partnered to offer .eth ENS domain holders the option to link their domains with traditional domains for free.
Meanwhile, Nick Johnson has expressed concerns about Unstoppable Domains’ patent applications related to blockchain domain names. In a letter from November last year, Johnson accused Unstoppable Domains of using ENS’s open-source developments for their patents, which goes against the principles of open innovation that ENS upholds. He pointed out that one specific patent granted to Unstoppable Domains is based on ENS’s innovations without introducing any new concepts, sparking ongoing debates about propriety and innovation in the blockchain domain space.
