Eth.link registrant released from prison

Virgil Griffith’s incarceration for helping North Korea evade sanctions led to an expired domain dispute.

A man whose incarceration sparked a domain name dispute has been released from prison.

Virgil Griffith pleaded guilty to a charge of violating international sanctions following teaching North Korea how to evade sanctions by using cryptocurrency. North Korea has become a sizable criminal organization in the crypto space.

He was released from prison this month following serving 36 months of his 56-month sentence.

Griffith’s imprisonment led to an interesting domain name dispute.

Ahead of his incarceration, the Ethereum enthusiast registered eth.link and created a site that helped .eth domains (part of Ethereum Name Service or ENS) resolve to websites in standard browsers. If the ENS name was example.eth, a user could type example.eth.link into any browser to resolve it to a website.

The domain expired while Griffith was in prison and was auctioned off on Dynadot with a final bid of $852,000.

That set off a frantic effort by Ethereum Name Service (True Names, Ltd) to get control of the domain. It filed a lawsuit against GoDaddy (where the domain was registered), Dynadot (which had a partnership to auction the domain), and the winning bidder.

Eventually, it decided to drop the case.

As of now, eth.link forwards to eth.limo, a similar service.