Some 218 people who paid for StrongBlock’s blockchain “nodes” can’t seek recovery in court for allegedly unpaid rewards because they agreed to terms of service that specified their disputes would be resolved by arbitration in the Cayman Islands, a US judge said.

The agreement created a binding obligation to arbitrate claims, according to Judge Laura Taylor Swain, regardless of whether the nodes are viewed as products or services and regardless of whether StrongBlock itself is a general partnership or a trade name owned by a holding company. Both the node characterization and the company structure remained disputed.

Swain, of …