Author: 0xjs@Golden Finance
"A good name is half the battle for a brand."
The same is true for good tickers in the crypto industry.
Recently, Ethereum's well-known zkRollup Layer2 project zkSync has aroused the anger of the crypto community due to the dispute over the ZK token name (Ticker) and trademark.
The reason for all this is that zkSync is finally going to issue coins.
Reason: zkSync chose ZK as the token name, causing conflict
May 21, 2024 According to sources, zkSync plans to hold a token generation event that week, and token issuance (including airdrops) will be carried out within 30 days after TGE, with a total supply of 21 billion tokens. The zkSync token airdrop is expected to take place around June 13.
zkSync wants its token to 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 zkSync token name choice, “It is incredible that in 2024, even if the ETH ETF has been approved, there are still some projects that benefit all parties and deprive others of the token name they deserve.”
On May 28, Polyhedra Network posted on the X platform that “zkSync has never contacted us and continues to spread rumors among different entities. If every project that invests a lot of money faces the threat of having its token Ticker seized after issuing tokens, the entire industry will become chaotic and bring major regulatory issues.”
In fact, this is not the first time that zkSync has encountered a token name problem. In the previous cycle in 2021, the L2 project ZKSwap used ZKS as the token name. At that time, zkSync had an unpleasant experience with ZKSwap due to the misunderstanding that the ZKS token name might cause.
Intensifying: zkSync developer files for ZK trademark, sparking outrage
On May 30, 2024, the conflict escalated further.
Market news has it that zkSync developer Matter Labs has gone a step further in 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 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 claim 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 company, it should be open to everyone. The use of the legal system by a company to annex a public resource goes against the spirit of cryptocurrency, the spirit of Ethereum, and the spirit of academia. They are publicly calling on the community to ask Matter Labs to withdraw all trademark applications and use of the "ZK" token name.
Signatories to 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 and 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 terms STARK, FRI, AIR. Founded StarkWare and we did not trademark 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.”
Rebecca Rettig, chief legal and policy officer at 0xPolygon Labs, also criticized the ZK trademark application, saying that trademarks protect company brands, not public products. She believes that applying for a trademark for a widely used technical term like "ZK" goes against the open source nature of encryption technology.
Polygon’s official Twitter account also called on Matter labs to withdraw all improperly submitted generic trademark applications.
In true Ethereum spirit, Polygon Labs continues to push out open source code that benefits everyone. This commitment has had a positive impact on the crypto space as a whole. Polygon Plonky2 has seen widespread adoption, demonstrating the huge benefits of our open and collaborative approach to the web3 community. One such beneficiary is Matter Labs, whose core “zk” technology stack for zkSync leverages Polygon Plonky2. Initially, they used this technology developed by Polygon Labs without proper notice until they were called out. Now, they’ve taken it a step further. Despite relying on zk technology from others, Matter Labs is now seeking to trademark “zk” to potentially restrict others from using it. Should anyone be allowed to monopolize the math publicly available by 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 to be doing this for the benefit of users. But ask yourself: would users really benefit if one company monopolized zk technology? Would the zkSync network still exist without the zk technology developed by Polygon Labs? No way. The “zk” trademark would actually cause harm to users through confusion.
Linea, a zkEVM L2 project under Metamask's parent company Consensys, also stood up to oppose Matter Labs' ZK trademark application. Linea said, "Using legal frameworks to claim ownership of cryptographic branches used to develop permissionless, decentralized L2 execution environments 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 would gradually change the token name on 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."
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 has unfortunately been the case in the past).
But ZK is the ultimate goal, so we’re taking it a step further. We’ve previously reached out to the Ethereum Foundation’s legal team and proposed collaborating on creating a legal framework for using “ZK” and similar important technical terms in the public domain. We invite others to participate in this initiative — especially those who have applied for trademarks related to STARK.
Some netizens also spoke out to defend zkSync.
The zkSync team is acting 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 by such an action, their release will not be threatened by the Polyhedra team.
The current temporary result is that Polyhedra has failed in its bid for ZK Ticker. However, due to the outrage in the crypto industry, whether zkSync can successfully obtain the ZK token name and ZK trademark, and how the dispute ends, remains to be seen.
A good ticker is all about competing for attention
In fact, the dispute between zkSync and Polyhedra over the ZK token name and the dispute over zkSync's application for the ZK trademark both 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. If you want to attract people's attention and occupy their minds, a good name can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
In the view of the project party, using proprietary terms or nouns that have already occupied the minds of users as the name of the token can make it "famous overnight", increase the "legitimacy" of the project, and boost investors' FOMO emotions.
Therefore, there are many tokens in the crypto industry that use special terms or nouns as their names.
This is most evident in the MEME coin space. If you search for MEME on Coinmarkertcap, you’ll see 100 tokens with MEME as their name.
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.