Matter Labs’ transfer to trademark the commonly-used acronym was met with condemnation from the web3 neighborhood.
Matter Labs, the workforce behind the ZkSync Ethereum scaling options, has ceased efforts to trademark the time period “ZK.”
On June 2, Matter Labs tweeted that it had determined to drop all trademark purposes for the time period ZK — a well-liked acronym referring to zero-knowledge cryptography.
The transfer got here after Matter Labs discovered itself on the middle of controversy after searching for to trademark the time period in 9 totally different jurisdictions.
“Thank you to everyone who reached out… offering ideas, support, and feedback,” Matter Labs tweeted on X. “As a result of these conversations, we decided to drop all trademark applications.”
Matter Labs’ efforts to trademark ZK attracted fierce criticism from rival teams working with zero-knowledge cryptography, including Polygon, Starkware, and Polyhedra. They argued that leveraging the legal system to claim the popular and longstanding acronym violated the ethos of web3.
“We condemn this habits within the strongest potential phrases, as a clear try by a company to say possession over one thing that doesn’t belong to it,” an open letter mentioned. “ZK ought to stay a public good. It shouldn’t be a trademark of a company: it ought to slightly be accessible to all.”
The projects also argued that Matter Labs was seeking to leverage the trademark to ensure its forthcoming token will trade under the ticker ZK — despite Polyhedra’s token already trading under that ticker.
Matter Labs responded by claiming it wished to find a way to ensure the term “ZK” functioned as a public good while maintaining the trademark.
“It would be impossible to agree on a group of people perceived as credibly neutral by nearly everyone,” the company said in its June 2 tweet. “What could have worked for Ethereum would not necessarily work for the entire world.”
The timing of the backlash comes as rumors are swirling that ZkSync will airdrop its long-awaited to customers in mid-June.
Hypothesis that the undertaking would airdrop a token to early adopters ramped up when Matter Labs launched ZkSync Period, its zk-EVM community, in March 2023. The deployment occurred inside days of Arbitrum, the biggest Layer 2 community by TVL, finishing its ten-figure airdrop.
ZkSync Period is now the ninth-largest Layer 2 community by complete worth locked (TVL), in accordance with L2beat. Its DeFi ecosystem additionally boasts a TVL of $145 million, in accordance with knowledge from DefiLlama.
