BANKEX sues ZKsync developers for stealing its technology, Matter Labs claims the allegations are "completely unfounded".

Foresight News reported that the defunct blockchain company BANKEX sued ZKsync developer Matter Labs, saying that former BANKEX employees Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev stole the company's technology and founded Matter Labs to build ZKsync. In 2017, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin approached BANKEX to build operating software for "Plasma," which at the time was seen as a way to reduce the cost of using Ethereum, the complaint alleges. Lexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev were employees of BANKEX at the time and were commissioned by Igor Khemel, CEO of BANKEX, to complete the Plasma project. Vlasov is currently the head of R&D at Matter Labs, while Korolev is the founder of OXORIO, a blockchain security company. Alex Gluchowski, co-founder of Matter Labs, Dragonfly, a crypto-native investment fund, and Chris Burniske, a partner at Placeholder Capital and former co-director of Matter Labs, have also been indicted for alleged involvement in and knowledge of the theft. A spokesperson for Matter Labs told CoinDesk in an emailed statement, "We believe these allegations are completely unfounded. The focus of the complaint is that Matter Labs built ZKsync on top of the code originally developed by Bankex. This is completely false. ZKsync is an original technology and is not based on or derived from any code developed by Bankex. We uphold the integrity of our work and look forward to responding to these baseless allegations in court upon receipt of the indictment."