Matter Labs sued by BANKEX over alleged theft of technology

Matter Labs, the company behind Ethereum Layer-2 solution ZKsync, is facing a lawsuit from BANKEX. 

BANKEX, a now-defunct blockchain firm, is alleging intellectual property theft involving early Plasma technology. 

The complaint, filed in the New York State Supreme Court, accuses former BANKEX employees Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev of misappropriating proprietary code to build Matter Labs.

According to the lawsuit, the two developers were working on Plasma-based software at BANKEX when they secretly diverted company resources to develop Matter Labs. 

The filing alleges they covertly stored codebases and transferred BANKEX’s technology while still on the company’s payroll.

BANKEX and Plasma

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), initially commissioned BANKEX in 2017 to help build Plasma, a framework for scaling Ethereum. The complaint links this early development to the foundation of ZKsync, which has since raised over $450 million and grown into a prominent Layer-2 network.

Matter Labs co-founder and CEO Alex Gluchowski, venture capital firm Dragonfly, and former board member Chris Burniske are also named in the suit.

CoinDesk reporting helped with the coverage of this news.