ENS
Labs,
the
team
behind
the
critical
piece
of
wallet
linking
infrastructure
Ethereum
Name
Service,
has
finally
settled
with
its
would-be
challenger
Manifold
Finance
over
access
to
the
all
important
eth.link
domain
name.
As
part
of
the
settlement,
ENS
has
apparently
agreed
to
a
non-disparagement
clause
with
Manifold,
restricting
what
it
can
say
publicly
about
the
18-month
legal
battle
over
the
domain
name,
which
served
as
a
critical
gateway
between
Web3
and
Web2.
But
just
because
ENS
can’t
comment,
doesn’t
mean
I
can’t.
This
is
an
excerpt
from
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news
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Manifold
is
a
middleware
blockchain
firm
that
most
people
have
only
heard
of
because
of
the
now
nearly-resolved
lawsuit
involving
ENS.
While
the
project
certainly
had
a
legal
claim
to
eth.link
after
paying
$852,000
in
a
Dynadot
auction
in
2022,
the
better
move
would
have
been
to
simply
relinquish
control
over
the
domain
after
discovering
the
circumstances
under
which
it
was
put
up
for
sale.
“http://eth.link
was
just
sniped
by
us,”
Manifold
wrote
on
Twitter/X
in
2022.
It’s
not
clear
if
the
company
ever
actually
took
possession
of
the
eth.link
service,
or
what
they
intended
to
do
with
it,
because
ENS,
after
realizing
it
lost
access
to
this
critical
gateway
successfully
obtained
a
preliminary
injunction
from
a
federal
district
court
judge
in
Phoenix,
Arizona
to
stop
the
transfer
and
return
the
domain.
This
itself
opened
up
a
period
of
litigation
that
had
been
“proceeding
slowly
through
the
courts,”
ENS
Labs
CEO
Nick
Johnson
wrote
in
a
recent
DAO
proposal
regarding
the
settlement.
Slow
and
almost
certainly
unnecessary
litigation
—
given
that
Manifold
never
really
had
a
moral
claim
to
the
service.
ENS
Labs
has
been
operating
eth.link
as
a
public
gateway
for
the
Ethereum
community
since
2017,
providing
a
way
for
traditional
web
services
to
access
on-chain
ENS
and
IPFS
data,
which
is
otherwise
incompatible
with
the
DNS
(or
domain
naming
service)
architecture
behind
traditional
websites.
ENS
lost
access
to
eth.link
because
the
domain
name
was
registered
by
Virgil
Griffith,
the
Ethereum
Foundation
developer
and
former
ENS
employee
who
was
arrested
after
giving
a
lecture
about
public
blockchains
in
North
Korea
and
unable
to
renew
the
registration
while
serving
a
63
month
sentence.
There’s
an
extra
wrinkle
in
that
the
eth.link
name,
originally
registered
with
internet
registrar
and
hosting
company
GoDaddy,
was
supposedly
valid
until
July
2023,
according
to
the
ENS
lawsuit.
Allegedly,
GoDaddy
“unilaterally”
determined
the
domain
had
expired
after
it
was
not
renewed
in
July
2022,
a
year
before
its
actual
expiration,
and
unlawfully
sold
it
to
Dynadot
that
September.
“In
so
doing,
GoDaddy
has
deprived
Plaintiff
True
Names
Ltd.
of
its
livelihood,”
the
ENS
complaint
alleges.
“The
sale
will
disable
a
valuable
cryptocurrency
network
and
recklessly
risk
making
it
available
to
scores
of
malicious
actors.”
Further,
ENS
alleges
it
should
have
been
allowed
to
re-register
the
domain
on
Griffith’s
behalf,
according
to
GoDaddy’s
terms-of-service
ENS
cited,
but
GoDaddy
failed
to
“respond
to
multiple
requests.”
It
isn’t
exactly
Manifold’s
fault
that
the
name
was
put
up
for
auction
—
and
to
its
credit,
Manifold
did
offer
to
return
the
domain
for
price,
a
move
that
sits
halfway
between
domain
name
squatting
and
extracting
rent.
Further,
it’s
not
exactly
clear
that
ENS
had
to
bring
Manifold
into
its
lawsuit,
which
was
really
centered
around
GoDaddy’s
practices.
(Neither
Manifold
and
ENS
responded
to
a
request
for
comment.)
The
whole
situation,
in
a
way,
is
unsportsmanlike.
Manifold
at
multiple
points
seems
to
have
been
taunting
ENS,
once
posting
on
Twitter/X
that
ENS
is
“Literally
suing
us
under
torts
Unfair
Competition.
We
are
so
good
at
it
that
its
unfair.”
Manifold
also
filed
a
motion
to
dismiss
the
lawsuit
and
vacate
the
preliminary
injunction
returning
eth.link
to
ENS,
a
bold
move
to
keep
possession
of
the
domain.
Now
the
ENS
community
will
pay
$300,000
(on
top
of
ENS
Labs’
$750,000
in
legal
fees)
to
Manifold
to
settle
the
matter.
While
the
crypto
industry
is
long
past
the
phase
where
ideological
commitments
and
overriding
beliefs
would
keep
disputes
outside
of
the
courts,
the
whole
debate
does
raise
questions
about
what
is
actually
unfolding.
In
a
recent
interview
with
CoinDesk,
Johnson
noted
that
Web3
cannot
naively
turn
its
back
from
the
wider
web,
which
is
why
ENS
is
partnering
with
GoDaddy
while
still
technically
fighting
the
company
in
court.
This
is
true
enough,
which
is
why
the
eth.link
name
matters
at
all
—
having
bridges
between
blockchains
and
the
traditional
web
is
invaluable.
But
the
sordid
affair
is
not
the
last
time
ENS
would
threaten
legal
action
over
ownership
of
intangible
assets.
To
be
fair,
any
project
as
important
as
ENS
—
the
go-to
way
to
create
human-readable
names
out
of
alphanumeric
blockchain
addresses
—
should
look
to
protect
itself.
But
as
a
matter
of
principle,
two
registered
corporations
duking
it
out
in
the
courts
doesn’t
exactly
scream
decentralization.
There
is
a
silver
lining
in
that
this
dispute
shows
DAO
governance
in
working
order.
The
settlement
was
put
to
a
vote
by
the
ENS
community,
with
88%
of
the
voting
power
in
agreement
over
the
settlement
and
84%
approving
the
reimbursement
of
ENS
Labs’
legal
expenses.
But
in
an
odd
way,
this
public
vote
is
also
a
detriment
to
ENS’s
litigation
strategy.
Only
11%
of
the
DAO’s
voting
power
wanted
to
continue
litigation.
As
DNS
expert
Andrew
Allemann
wrote
in
Domain
Name
Wire,
with
ENS
still
needing
a
to
finalize
its
settlement
with
Manifold
before
dropping
the
case
against
GoDaddy
and
Dynadot,
“Manifold
will
be
in
a
strong
position
to
get
the
terms
it
wants,
given
that
the
DAO
publicly
opposed
continuing
litigation.”
In
a
better
world
this
lawsuit
would
help
prove
the
value
of
and
need
for
decentralizing
digital
identities
—
but
in
the
end
it
looks
like
centralized
entities
all
the
way
down.
