As the main narrative force of the L2 track, the ZK track is facing a trademark battle. Recently, zkSync developer Matter Labs has caused protests from many projects after submitting a "ZK trademark application." Projects including Polyhedra Network, Polygon, and StarkWare have jointly boycotted the project.
The matter started on May 24, when zkSync’s token was named “ZK "The name was listed on the exchange Bybit's spot trading, which subsequently caused dissatisfaction with Polyhedra Network, which is also a ZK project. The token code of this project also happens to be "ZK". Polyhedra Network stated in a tweet that although the ETH ETF has been approved in 2024, there are still projects that "grab" the project codes that others deserve for their own benefit. Web3 is not intended to be a hotbed of bullying, and the project He also called on the community to defend fairness and justice, and even named zkSync directly.
A few days later, Polyhedra tweeted again, “We have never been contacted by zkSync, which is constantly spreading rumors between different entities. If every project that issues a token faces the risk of being heavily invested in If a funded project seizes the threat of its project code, the entire industry will become chaotic and bring major regulatory issues." Subsequently, Polyhedra changed its token code to ZKJ when it was listed on HashKey Global, symbolizing "ZK Join." ——A united and open ZK community. Currently, Polyhedra’s listing code on various trading platforms has been changed to ZKJ in response to a week-long trademark dispute.
At the same time, Matter Labs submitted “ZK” trademark applications in nine countries, which also caused widespread dissatisfaction in the encryption industry. To this end, Polyhedra, Polygon and StarkWare jointly issued an open letter. In addition to Polyhedra co-founder and zkBridge inventor Tiancheng Xie, Polygon co-founders Sandeep Nailwal and Brendan Farmer, StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson, zero-knowledge proof Industry leaders including co-inventor and Algorand founder Silvio Micali, Turing Award winner and ZK-proofs co-inventor Shafi Goldwasser, and Kakarot zkeVM co-founder Elias Tazartes all signed the letter calling on Matter Labs to withdraw its trademark application. He called it an "act of oppression."
Among them, Polygon tweeted that in line with the true spirit of Ethereum, Polygon Labs has always released open source code for the benefit of everyone, and this commitment has had a positive impact on the entire cryptocurrency field. Polygon Plonky2 has been widely adopted, and one of the beneficiaries is Matter Labs, whose core ZK technology also utilizes Polygon Plonky2. Despite relying on others' ZK technology, Matter Labs sought to register the "ZK" trademark to potentially restrict others from using the technology. If a company monopolizes ZK technology, will users really benefit? Would zkSync exist without the ZK technology developed by Polygon Labs? No, its trademark registration of "ZK" will actually cause harm to users through confusion. Openness is the foundation of Ethereum and must be preserved, especially regarding core mathematical principles.
“Matter Labs claims that ZK is its exclusive intellectual property, but they neither created nor contributed to the creation of this technology. By using the legal system to appropriate public resources as their own, Matter Labs It goes against the spirit of cryptocurrency, Ethereum and its own principles,” StarkWare tweeted, and Eli Ben-Sasson also said that Matter Labs’ attempt to register ZK technology as a trademark was a “ridiculous intellectual property squatting.” ".
May 30 , Matter Labs, the protagonist of this "trademark ownership war", finally responded in a post on social platforms. ZK technology belongs to the community and must always be a public property, free and open to everyone. Matter Labs applied for ZK-related trademarks to ensure that the word "ZK" can be used freely in the context of "ZK Sync", "ZK Stack" and other related names. Like it or not, trademarks are the only legal tool currently available. A common misconception is that having a trademark means you legally own a word or phrase and can prevent others from using it. However, you do not have a general right to the word or phrase, only the right to use the word or phrase in connection with your particular goods or services. Matter Labs is committed to finding an appropriate structure for the ZK trademark to make it accessible to everyone building ZK technology. ZK technology and its terminology should always remain a public good, freely available for everyone to use.
At the same time, Matter Labs founder and CEO Alex also responded that Matter Labs is a fanatical supporter of libertarianism, the spirit of cypherpunk and the values stated in the ZK creed. They oppose the concept of "intellectual property" and all its Everything created is released to the public under a free and open source license. Trademarks exist to protect users, not companies. All trademarks ever registered by Matter Labs, including those related to ZK, are defensive to prevent dishonest actors from misleading customers and confusing their products and services with those provided by Matter Labs (unfortunately , this was indeed the case in the past). Matter Labs previously approached the Ethereum Foundation’s legal team and offered to collaborate on creating a legal framework that would allow “ZK” and similar important technical terms to be used in the public domain, and now the team is asking others to participate in this initiative. Especially those projects that have applied for trademarks related to STARKs.
Prior to this, zkSync ecological running project ZKasino had been criticized by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for not using any ZK technology, and he also expressed his concern for the increasingly mainstream term "ZK" ization’s concerns that the word has become so overused that even scammers have started taking advantage of the buzzword.
What’s interesting is that the Ethereum L2 project has also “stepped in”. Taiko said on the X platform that some discussions on the token code have been held this week, taking into account fairness to everyone, and Noting that another project was already using TKO as its code, it was decided to change the token code to TAIKO to prevent conflicts and facilitate token listing.
The community is also debating this trademark dispute. Some people believe that Polyhedra’s initial token code was ZKB and later changed to ZK, which was also suspected of gaining popularity. And judging from the X registration timeline, Zksync was registered in 2019, earlier than Polyhedra’s 2023. Some people also believe that ZK is a public product and not any specific project. Using this name is nothing more than a lack of confidence in one's own project and is deceptive to uninformed investors.
Today, when brands are becoming more and more important, creating a trademark "golden sign" has become an effective means of establishing widespread popularity and an important weapon for project/enterprise market strategic competition. However, various past cases have also shown that the golden sign Whether the signboard can be polished or not, the product is the more critical factor.
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