A surprising development happened in the UK court when a judge allowed the ruling to submit lawsuits via NFT drops.
The lawsuit filed by Fabrizio D’Aloia with Giambrone & Partners LLP as representing a law firm, against an unknown user and crypto exchanges for crypto funds loss requested NFT airdrop which was granted by the UK judge to proceed with the case.
Law is one of the most challenging traditional industries that take a long time to adopt modern technologies in their processes. However, the recent ruling showed that Britain courts might be ready to embrace blockchain NFTs as part of legal proceedings.
NFTs or non-fungible tokens are primarily assumed to be digital art, PFPs, or any kind of artwork in general but many don’t know that NFTs have a greater utility than just being a digital collectible.
NFTs are mainly built on the technology that supports digital ownership through a certificate. Every transaction is recorded and stored in the blockchain which everyone can access because it’s a distributed ledger technology.
A lawsuit that turned into NFT airdrop
The court’s ruling for NFT airdrops comes from an ongoing lawsuit against an unknown user operating a “fraudulent clone online brokerage,” and Binance holdings, Poloniex, gate.io, OKX, and Bitkub with crypto fraud allegations.
On June 24, Giambrone & Partners LLP representing Fabrizio D’Aloia requested the High Court of England and Wales to rule legal proceedings by airdropping NFTs held by D’Aloia but stolen by anonymous users, which was accepted by the ruling judge.
Traditionally, courts require lawyers and parties to submit physical documents via fax or drop them off at a physical address, but for this case the judge allowed parties to submit via blockchain technology by airdropping NFTs.
According to the official press release by Giambrone, this isn’t the first time an electronic method was adopted to serve someone. The court had allowed the same procedure for other cases after both the parties agreed to it.
However, those electronic exchanges were done via Facebook messages, Instagram DMs, or a website’s contact form.
In other words, this is the first time for a judge to allow serving through blockchain NFTs and shows a surprising development for the entirety of the court system.
“This order is a noteworthy development in the area of service of court documents and a welcome example of a court embracing new technology. It is also a significant judgment as it demonstrates how England and Wales is one of the best jurisdictions in the world, if not the best when it comes to protecting victims of cryptoasset fraud,” Giambrone stated.
Regarding the case, Giambrone held crypto exchanges accountable for approving this fraud happening on their platforms. The law firm claimed that the exchanges failed to protect its users from crypto fraud. The case is still ongoing in the English court.
What can this mean for the English court system?
As mentioned before, the law and court system takes a lot of time in adopting new technologies to their models. However, the NFTs and blockchain technology are becoming more and more involved with the courts due to the crypto-related cases that require evidence.
Before the UK court, a US court also allowed the defendant to airdrop NFT to serve in a case. This shows that judges are open to ruling blockchain as an authentic piece of evidence in crypto-related cases in some countries.
Nonetheless, there is no proper court rule or procedure defined in the law, which makes it only possible case-by-case. In other words, there’s no practical shape that legal documents can serve through NFTs.
As the crypto industry continues to expand in the traditional economy, more and more crypto lawsuits and scandals are likely to surface. Therefore, it is essential for authorities to establish defined regulations to make things easier.
The UK court ruling can be a good start towards establishing those regulations.
