Wormhole investor to acquire rights to the eponymous domain

Jump Trading, the company behind Wormhole, moved closer to acquiring a domain whose name mirrors the cross-chain protocol. This was preceded by a lawsuit against its owner, Dick Merriman, of Nevada, according to Business Insider.

In June 2021, the 79-year-old Merriman was offered $2,500 for the wormhole.com domain, but he rejected the offer, naming his price “a firm $50,000”. Subsequently, the owner changed his mind, saying that the figure he named turned out to be low. In an interview he also admitted that he had not taken the offer seriously at all, since the site had become “part of the family.”

Merriman acquired the rights to the domain in 1994, inspired by the 1985 film “Contact,” in which the characters could travel through space via a wormhole. The science-fiction enthusiast launched a simple site with an image from space.

The holding company Jump Operations waited for several months for a response to their demands to implement the terms laid out in the correspondence, after which they filed suit.

On 8 April, a judge barred Merriman from transferring rights to wormhole.com and ordered the registrar Network Solutions to block the domain until a verdict. The injunction was imposed without the defendant’s knowledge.

The attorney refused to defend Merriman, after which he agreed to sell wormhole.com.

“I’m not thrilled, but I agreed. I’m tired,” he said.

The parties expect to sign a settlement. Court documents indicate that Merriman is representing his rights himself.

In an interview with Decrypt analyst David Michaels noted that the domain owner could have expected to receive between $200,000 and $500,000 as a result of negotiations.

In the night of February 3, 2022, Wormhole was hacked. Attackers exploited the vulnerability and withdrew 120,000 WETH (more than $319 million at the time) from the project’s pool. Jump Trading provided financing to cover the losses.

In August 2021, Jump Trading acquired the infrastructure firm Certus One, which is behind the development of the cross-chain protocol.

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