The battle for “ZK”: the battle for good tickers and attention in the crypto industry

Author: 0xjs@黄金财经

"A good name is half the battle for a brand."

In the crypto industry, the same is true for good Tickers.

Recently, the well-known Ethereum zkRollup Layer2 project zkSync has sparked outrage in the crypto community over the dispute over the token name (Ticker) and trademark ZK.

The reason for all this is that zkSync is finally going to issue a token.

Reason: zkSync's choice of ZK as the token name caused a conflict

On May 21, 2024, according to sources, zkSync plans to hold a token generation event that week, and the token issuance (including airdrops) will be carried out within 30 days after the TGE, with a total supply of 21 billion tokens. The zkSync token airdrop is expected to take place around June 13.

And zkSync hopes that its token will use ZK as its token name. But the problem is that another zk project Polyhedra has already used this name and is trading this token name on some mainstream exchanges.

Subsequently, Bybit announced on May 23 that it would adjust the name of the Polyhedra token and list zkSync on its spot trading platform with the code ZK.

On May 24, Polyhedra publicly condemned the choice of zkSync token name, "It is incredible that in 2024, even if the ETH ETF has been approved, there are still some projects that bring benefits to all parties and deprive others of their deserved token names."

On May 28, Polyhedra Network posted on the X platform that "zkSync has never contacted us, and zkSync continues to spread rumors among different entities. If every project that invests a lot of money faces the threat of its token Ticker being seized after issuing tokens, the entire industry will become chaotic and bring major regulatory issues."

In fact, this is not the first time zkSync has encountered a token name problem. In the previous cycle of 2021, the L2 project ZKSwap used ZKS as the token name. At that time, zkSync had an unpleasant experience with ZKSwap because of the misunderstanding that the ZKS token name might cause.

Aggravation: zkSync development company submitted the ZK trademark and aroused public anger

On May 30, 2024, the conflict further intensified.

Market news has it that zkSync developer Matter Labs has gone one step further by choosing ZK as the name of its token and has filed trademark applications in nine countries, attempting to use "ZK" as Matter Labs' exclusive intellectual property.

This has angered the crypto industry.

StarkWare, Algorand, Polygon, Polyhedra Network, Kakarot and other ZK projects jointly issued a statement condemning Matter Labs' actions.

This is clearly a company trying to take something that does not belong to it. ZK should remain a public resource that belongs to everyone. It should not be a trademark of a certain company, it should be open to everyone. "A company using the legal system to appropriate public resources is against the spirit of cryptocurrency, the spirit of Ethereum, and the spirit of academia. We are publicly calling on the community to demand that Matter Labs withdraw all trademark applications and use of the "ZK" token name."

The signatories of the joint statement include:

Shafi Goldwasser, Turing Award winner, co-inventor of ZK proofs, and scientific advisor to StarkWare;

Silvio Micali, Turing Award winner, co-inventor of ZK proofs, and founder of Algorand Technologies;

Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of StarkWare, founding scientist of Zcash, and co-inventor of ZK-STARKs;

Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon;

Tiancheng Xie, co-founder of Polyhedra Network, inventor of zkBridge;

Brendan Farmer, co-founder of Polygon;

Elias Tazartes, co-founder of Kakarot;

StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson tweeted, “I coined the mathematical term STARK, FRI, AIR. Founded StarkWare, we did not register trademarks for them. Mathematics is a public product. No company should claim to own it. Of course, a company that emerged 30 years after mathematics was discovered should not own it. ”

0xPolygon Labs Chief Legal and Policy Officer Rebecca Rettig also criticized the ZK trademark application. The trademark protects the company's brand, not the public product. She believes that applying for a trademark for a widely used technical term such as "ZK" violates the open source nature of encryption technology.

Polygon's official Twitter also issued a message calling on Matter labs to withdraw all improperly submitted general trademark applications.

In true Ethereum spirit, Polygon Labs continues to release open source code that benefits everyone. This commitment has had a positive impact on the entire crypto space. Polygon Plonky2 has been widely adopted, demonstrating the huge benefits of our open and collaborative approach to the web3 community. One such beneficiary is Matter Labs, which leverages Polygon Plonky2 for its core “zk” technology stack at zkSync. Initially, they used this technology developed by Polygon Labs without proper declaration until they were called out. Now, they have taken it a step further. Despite relying on others’ zk technology, Matter Labs now seeks to trademark “zk” to potentially restrict others from using it. Should anyone be allowed to monopolize the math publicly available from pioneers like Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Charles Rackoff, Eli Ben-Sasson (STARKs), or Daniel Lubarov (Plonky2, a widely adopted zk library in web3)? Absolutely not. They may claim that they are doing this for the benefit of users. But ask yourself: would users really benefit if one company had a monopoly on zk technology? Would the zkSync network even exist without the zk technology developed by Polygon Labs? No way. The “zk” trademark would actually cause harm to users through confusion.

Linea, the zkEVM L2 project under Metamask's parent company Consensys, also stood up against Matter Labs' ZK trademark application. Linea said, "Using a legal framework to claim ownership of a cryptographic branch used to develop a permissionless, decentralized L2 execution environment goes against the principles of Ethereum and why we are all here... We support Starkware's statement that Matter Labs should withdraw their trademark attempt."

On May 30, a week after Polyhedra and zkSync clashed over the "ZK" token name, Polyhedra announced that it would use the token name "ZKJ" when it was listed on HashKey Global on May 31, and gradually change the token names of all current exchanges to "ZKJ".

Some netizens even said: “Registering a trademark for ZK is stealing the work of other ZK developers” and “Registering air as a trademark would be an epic thing.”

Listen to both sides: Matter Labs’ defense

In response to the public statements of many ZK projects, Matter Labs founder and CEO Alex Gluchowski personally defended the ZK trademark application.

Matter Labs is an avid supporter of libertarianism, the cypherpunk ethos, and the values ​​described in ZK Credo. We reject the concept of "intellectual property". Everything we create is released to the public under a free open source license.

However, trademarks exist to protect users, not companies. All trademarks we have ever registered, including those related to ZK, have been defensive to prevent dishonest actors from misleading customers and confusing their products and services with those provided by Matter Labs (which, unfortunately, has been the case in the past).

But ZK is the ultimate goal, so we’re taking it a step further. We previously approached the Ethereum Foundation’s legal team and proposed collaborating on creating a legal framework for the use of “ZK” and similar important technical terms in the public domain. We invite others to join this initiative — especially those who have applied for STARK-related trademarks.

There are also netizens who have spoken out in defense of zkSync.

The zkSync team is in good faith to ensure security and will announce this publicly, because the Polyhedra clown threatened their release with market volatility, so I think the ZK team has no choice but to register it as a trademark and then announce that anyone can use it. I believe that through such actions, their release will not be threatened by the Polyhedra team.

The current temporary result is that Polyhedra's fight for ZK Ticker has failed. However, due to the anger of the crypto industry, whether zkSync can successfully obtain the ZK token name and ZK trademark, and how the dispute ends, remains to be further observed.

A good ticker is to compete for attention

In fact, the dispute between zkSync and Polyhedra over the name of the ZK token and the dispute over zkSync's application for the ZK trademark reflect how scarce attention is in the current crypto market, and each project wants to use a good ticker to compete for people's attention.

In modern society, everyone's attention is limited. In order to attract people's attention and occupy people's minds, a good name can achieve twice the result with half the effort.

In the eyes of the project side, using a proprietary term or noun that has already occupied the user's mind as the token name can "become famous overnight", increase the "legitimacy" of the project, and boost investors' FOMO emotions.

Therefore, many tokens with proprietary terms or nouns as their names have appeared in the crypto industry.

This is most obvious in the field of MEME coins. Search MEME on Coinmarkertcap, and you will see 100 tokens named MEME.

Other MeMe coins that use well-known words as token names include PEPE, DOG, People, TRUMP, MAGA, ORDI, etc.

In addition to MEME, there are countless projects that use well-known nouns as token tickers, such as TAO, NEO, QTUM, TOKEN, GAS, etc.