As ruled by the New York court, court orders can now be served as NFTs. This is extremely interesting advancement for the NFT space as a whole. It is certainly one of the most interesting new use cases for NFTs. The defunct firm Hollan & Knight served an NFT restraining order on a defendant in a hacking case.

New York Court Orders as NFTs

Based on a new ruling by the New York court system, court orders can now be served on an NFT. We’ve already seen the first case on this front, and it could be the first of many. Some claim that this case may have great historical value based on the first-time nature of what happened.

The first case was the LCX case, the cryptocurrency exchange hacked for nearly $8 million. For clarification, LCX representatives served the defendant, who remains anonymous, with a restraining order issued on-chain using an ERC-721 NFT. LCX stated that this method “has been approved by the New York Supreme Court. It is an example of how innovation can bring legitimacy and transparency to a market that some consider ungovernable.”

You can find the NFT on Etherscan.

What the future brings

It is uncertain what this will mean for future court decisions. While unlikely, it is unconfirmed whether these tokens can be sold by the parties who will distribute and use them in court. A Twitter user said they “hope it’s a soul tie.” To be clear, this would mean that the NFT could not be resold. It would only be made available to a certain number of people. This would be the case, for example, if the original holder loses wallet information.

If that’s not the case, and these future court NFTs aren’t soulbound tokens, then just imagine how big some of those big court case sales could be…