The Latest Beef in Web3

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Drake and Kendrick? That’s old news.

There’s a new beef 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 firm’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.

Problem is, a lot of companies have used zero-knowledge (ZK) technology.

Getting a trademark for ZK tech is akin to getting a trademark on ‘the internet’ because you made a website.

Or as the CEO of StarkWare, Eli Ben-Sasson, put it: “It’s as absurd as an individual baker trying to impose a blanket patent on bread.”

As a symbol of goodwill, Polyhedra Network announced yesterday that they will go with the ticker “ZKJ” for their Friday listing instead of the originally planned “ZK” ticker.

Polyhedra, Polygon and StarkWare also published a joint statement signed by each that ZK “should remain a public good.”

Right now we’re waiting to hear how Matter Labs will respond, but our feeling is they’ll let the legal battle in all nine countries run it’s course and hope for the best.

Problem is, reputation is so important in web3.

Get users off-side and you could be in some serious trouble.

Let’s see how this plays out.