Carl Sagan Fan Sold Wormhole.com To Crypto Firm Jump After Lawsuit

A Carl Sagan fan sold Wormhole.com to the crypto company Jump after the latter sued the 79-year-old man from Nevada over the name so let’s read more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

Jump backed the bridge platform known as Wormhole and it launched a legal campaign against the man from Nevada. Jump tried to purchase Wormhole.com from the Carl Sagan Fan for more than a year. The man capitulated after the tradign giant sued him for breach of contract. Dick Merryman, a 70-year-old computer engineer got a lawsuit from Jump Operations in order to obtain the wormhole.com domain that he owned for years and corresponds to the email he created for himself and his wife. For Merryman, the domain reflects his fondness for Carl Sagan whose 1985 novel “contract” deployed the wormhole to allow characters to skip across light-years. Merryman purchased the domain in 1994 creating a placeholder website that displays a cosmic picture.

 

For Jump, wormhole has a different significance and it is the name of the platform which creates “bridges” between the blockchains like Solana and Ethereum and where Jump has a huge investment. While Jump is using wormholenetwork.com to hos the Wormhole-related content It coveted the shorter name owned by Merryman and started to acquire it last year. In June 2021, someone at Jump used a third-party domain broker to approach Merryman and offered him $2500 for the name and the latter rebuffed the request saying that the price was a firm $50,000.

To Merryman’s surprise, Jump accepted the offer which Merryman ignored, and after being badgered by the broker, he made the feeling clear a few weeks later:

“Nope, sorry, I changed my mind. This was too easy, I’m either leaving a lot of money on the table or it is a scam. Either way, no sale. If you want to make a reasonable offer, then you are encouraged to do so.”

Jump warned Merryman he was in breach of contract and had to honor the message saying he will sell for $50,000:

“I didn’t really want to sell it. I’ve had the same email address for 28 years—it’s like family.”

A court document filed on Monday shows a settlement in the case pending and the court records indicate that Merryman still has no legal representation:

“That’s unfortunate. He needs a good lawyer who can negotiate a settlement,” David Michaels, a trademark lawyer and brand consultant. Long time domain name owners are being fleeced by sophisticated buyers on a daily basis.”