TL; DR
Full story
Drake and Kendrick? That’s old news.
There’s a new problem in town, and this time it’s happening in the web3 space.
Here’s what’s happened so far:
A company called Matter Labs has filed trademark applications in nine countries to claim the term “zero-knowledge” as the company’s exclusive intellectual property.
They claim that because they developed ‘zkSync’ (a product that helps scale Ethereum), they should be able to claim the trademark.
The problem is that many companies have adopted zero-knowledge (ZK) technology.
Obtaining a trademark for ZK tech is similar to obtaining a trademark on ‘the internet’ because you created a website.
Or as StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson put it: “It’s as absurd as an individual baker trying to impose a general patent on bread.”
As a symbol of goodwill, Polyhedra Network announced yesterday that they will use the ticker “ZKJ” for their Friday list instead of the originally planned “ZK” ticker.
Polyhedra, Polygon and StarkWare also published a joint statement, signed by each, that ZK “must remain a public asset.”
At this point, we’re waiting to see how Matter Labs will respond, but we have a feeling they’ll let the legal battle play out in all nine countries and hope for the best.
The problem is that reputation is so important on web3.
If you sideline users, you can get into serious trouble.
Let’s see how this turns out.