Eth.link registrant released from prison, triggering domain name dispute

Recently, Virgil Griffith, a cryptocurrency expert who was imprisoned for helping North Korea evade sanctions, was released after serving 36 months in prison. This was originally a personal event, but it unexpectedly pushed the Eth.link domain name dispute, which had attracted widespread attention, back into the public eye.

As a senior Ethereum enthusiast, Griffith registered the Eth.link domain name before he was imprisoned, and based on this, he created a special service that enables Ethereum domain name service (.eth) domain names to be resolved in standard web browsers, greatly facilitating users to access the corresponding ENS domain names. For example, entering example.eth.link can access the corresponding content of example.eth.

However, while he was in prison, the Eth.link domain name quietly expired.

After the domain name expired, it was publicly auctioned on the domain name trading platform Dynadot, and was eventually sold at a high price of US$852,000.

This transaction quickly caused an uproar. True Names Ltd, the organization behind the Ethereum domain name service, quickly took action and sued the domain name registrar GoDaddy, the auction platform Dynadot, and the auction winner in court, trying to regain control of the Eth.link domain name, arguing that the domain name is closely related to the Ethereum domain name service system and should not fall into the hands of others.

After a series of legal procedures, True Names Ltd finally decided to withdraw the lawsuit, and the domain name dispute came to an end.

Today, Eth.link has been redirected to Eth.limo, which also provides similar ENS domain name resolution services.