Bankex Accuses Matter Labs of Misappropriating Its Technology
Date: 2025-04-23 Author: Oliver Abernathy Categories: BUSINESS
A lawsuit was filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York on behalf of the Bankex fund and its CEO Igor Khmel, which alleges misappropriation of intellectual property. The lawsuit states that former Bankex employees Alexander Vlasov and Petr Korolev used the company's technology to create Matter Labs, which subsequently attracted more than $450 million in investments and took a significant place in the blockchain industry.
According to the plaintiffs, in 2017, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin approached Bankex with a proposal to develop a software solution for Plasma, a technology aimed at reducing transaction costs on the Ethereum network. At the time, Vlasov and Korolev worked at Bankex and were assigned to this project, but, according to company representatives, they used Bankex's knowledge and resources to create their own organization, Matter Labs.
The plaintiffs claim that the employees secretly copied the source code and other elements of the technology using Bankex's facilities and infrastructure. Vlasov currently holds a senior position in the research department of Matter Labs, and Korolev founded OXORIO, a company specializing in cybersecurity in the blockchain sphere.
The lawsuit concerns not only the two named employees. The defendants also include Matter Labs co-founder Alex Glukhovsky, the Dragonfly venture fund, one of the partners of Placeholder Capital, and former Matter Labs director Chris Burniske. According to the plaintiffs, all of them are involved in the illegal use of Bankex technology.
In response to the accusations, a representative of Matter Labs stated that the claims are unfounded. He emphasized that ZKsync is a completely original product, not related to any Bankex code. According to him, the statement about the alleged borrowing of the source code is false.
This is not the first time that Matter Labs has been accused of copyright infringement. In 2023, Polygon also made accusations against the company, claiming that it had used someone else’s developments. At that time, Matter Labs denied all accusations. That same year, Alex Glukhovsky proposed the idea of creating a decentralized “Ethereum Supreme Court” that could resolve such disputes within the blockchain community.
