You’ve Been Served Via NFT: British Court Gives OK to Sue on Blockchain

In Britain, you can now use the blockchain to sue someone.

A UK judge gave the go-ahead to serve legal documents—the process of bringing a lawsuit to a person’s attention—over the blockchain ledger by a non-fungible token for the first time, according to court documents made public this week.

The ruling comes from a case brought by Fabrizio D’Aloia, founder of an online gambling company, who’s suing cryptocurrency exchange Binance Holdings and other platforms. D’Aloia filed the claim after his crypto assets were fraudulently cloned on the brokerages.

Read more: Why Crypto Scams Are Driving an Online Crime Boom — And How to Outsmart Them

The court also ruled that the exchanges were responsible for ensuring stolen crypto is not moved or taken out of their systems.

The service will now take place by airdropping the lawsuit documents via NFT into two wallets that were originally used by D’Aloia and stolen by the fraudsters. This paves the way for victims of crypto fraud to sue unknown crooks in the UK, law firm Giambrone & Partners LLP said.

A US court made a similar move to authorize service via an NFT in June.