ENS’s request to transfer eth.link — Dynadot opposes

Registrar states it would allow ENS to escape jurisdiction.

ENS and Virgil Griffith sued Dynadot in September 2022 following the registrar sold the domain for $852,000 in an expired domain name auction. Griffith is in jail for helping North Korea evade sanctions and could not renew the domain.

The court issued a preliminary injunction in ENS’ favor that ordered the domain to be transferred to the plaintiffs pending the outcome of the case.

Dynadot transferred the domain to the plaintiffs but put a transfer lock on it to prevent it from being transferred to another registrar.

ENS didn’t complain regarding the lock until a DNS abuse took eth.link down at the end of March. Dynadot temporarily removed the nameservers for the domain upon receipt of the complaint but restored them hours later.

Concerned that Dynadot could take the site down again, ENS asked the court to allow it to move the domain to another domain name registrar.

Yesterday, Dynadot filed an objection to ENS request. It states that, ought to ENS be allowed to transfer the domain, it could move it to a registrar outside the court’s jurisdiction, effectively ending the case in ENS’ favor.

It also states that its response to phishing complaints involving ENS were appropriate and its investigation was required by ICANN rules. It states the downtime was approximately 1 hour 45 minutes.

It turns out that the phishing complaint was regarding a .eth site. Since eth.link resolves .eth sites in normal browsers, someone complained regarding a third level domain that resolves through eth.link.