Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski Refutes Plagiarism Accusations
Alex Gluchowski, the creator of zkSync and CEO of Matter Labs, has responded to allegations made by Polygon Zero, a zero-knowledge scaling firm, that Matter Labs plagiarized code without proper attribution. Gluchowski called the accusations “unfounded, misleading, and extremely disappointing.”
Main Breakdowns:
- Polygon Zero accuses Matter Labs of copy-pasting code from the Plonky2 library without crediting the original authors.
- Polygon claims that Boojum, Matter Labs’ recent release, integrates code from Plonky2 without proper attribution.
- Polygon highlights similarities between Boojum and Plonky2, including the use of parallel repetition, custom gates, and a lookup argument.
- Matter Labs maintains that they credited Polygon in the Boojum module and that only a small percentage of the code draws inspiration from Plonky2.
- Matter Labs suggests that Polygon could have submitted a pull request for additional credit.
Hot Take: It is essential for developers to provide proper attribution when using open-source code. While Matter Labs acknowledges that they could have handled the situation better, the accusations of plagiarism seem exaggerated. The community’s feedback should be taken into account, and clearer attribution methods should be implemented in the future.