Matter Labs Accused Of Code Plagiarism, CEO Denies Plagiarism, Calls Accusations 'Misleading'

Alex Gluchowski, the co-founder and CEO of zkSync creator Matter Labs, denies allegations of code plagiarism from Polygon Zero.

The accusations, which surfaced on Aug. 3, suggested that Matter Labs had copied "performance-critical components" from Polygon Zero's zero-knowledge system, "Plonky2," for their newly released proving system, "Boojum," without giving due credit to the original authors.

Polygon Zero, a zk-scaling (zero knowledge) company, detailed in a blog post that such behavior could potentially harm the developer ecosystem and significantly smaller development teams.

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Well-funded competitors could easily copy their work without proper attribution, which they believe goes against the open source ethos.

Gluchowski has strongly refuted these allegations, stating that they are "unfounded, misleading, and extremely disappointing." He acknowledged past mistakes but assured that the team has an ethos of integrity and transparency that drives every decision.

About 5% of the Boojum code is based on Plonky2 code, and for that reused code, clear attribution is provided, Gluchowski explained. He also pointed out that the README file and the intro post contain acknowledgments to Plonky2.

He further stated that if the Polygon Zero team wanted additional credit, they could have submitted a pull request, which would have been gladly accepted.

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The CEO also expressed surprise over complaints about benchmarking, arguing that the purpose of neutral third-party benchmarks is to compare like with like, beyond marketing noise and implementation nuances.

He invited anyone who could make the Boojum code 10x faster to join their team, promising to name one of his cats in their honor.

Gluchowski concluded his statement by reiterating Matter Labs' commitment to open source and genuine cooperation.

He affirmed that all their software components, including Boojum and ZK Stack, were open-sourced under a free permissive license when released to the public.

He emphasized that each of these components is a small step on the long journey to scale Ethereum along with its values.

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