In recent days, the cryptocurrency community has been buzzing about the ongoing battle between Unstoppable Domains and Ethereum Name Service (ENS). These are two leading projects in the NFT domain and web3 space.
The conflict began with a patent dispute between the two parties involving Nick Johnson, the main developer of ENS, on the social platform X. Due to their completely opposing development directions, these two projects found themselves in conflict.
Specifically, ENS, established in 2017, has always been in favor of open-source principles and maintains all product copyrights under open-source licenses. This means that any innovations or technologies developed by the ENS team can be accessed by everyone. Other projects are free to utilize the open-source code of these innovations for further product development.
On the other hand, Unstoppable Domains, founded in 2018, employs closed-source coding and seeks copyrights for its creations. In January 2023, Unstoppable Domains applied for a copyright for the “Resolving Blockchain Domains” concept, identified as US11558344. However, according to Nick Johnson, this “concept” is essentially a product based on technology that ENS had previously developed and publicly disclosed, without any additional creative or innovative input from the Unstoppable Domains team.
Furthermore, Unstoppable Domains continued to seek copyrights for a concept similar to the well-known “Sunrise Phase” technology used in the DNS (Domain Name System) industry for a long time.
With the “copyright” for Resolving Blockchain Domains in hand, the project established an organization called the Web3 Domain Alliance and published PR articles emphasizing its patent rights.
In response, ENS negotiated with Unstoppable Domains, requesting them to remove the PR articles and respect the open-source and collaborative nature of the industry. Nick Johnson even threatened that ENS would be willing to “challenge by patent” the copyrights registered by Unstoppable Domains.
However, Unstoppable Domains not only ignored ENS’s requests but also invited ENS to join the newly established Alliance: “We continue to call on projects to join the Web3 Domain Alliance, not just ENS. We hope for the participation of willing ‘competitors’ to further develop the web3 domain space.”
The copyright battle between these two parties is expected to continue and extend. Currently, it seems that ENS has the upper hand, and the community is divided into two factions, each with its own predictions about the outcome of this race.