Polygon Zero accuses zkSync of copying code, founder responds Open source may not be suitable for you.

Polygon Zero accuses zkSync of code copying, founder responds open source may not suit you.

What is the true spirit of open source?

Polygon’s official zero-knowledge proof team, Polygon Zero, publicly criticized zkSync, accusing it of unauthorized replication of Polygon’s open source code and making misleading statements.

The drama between these two top Layer 2 development teams in the ZK field has attracted wide attention in the industry for a while.

In an article titled “Protecting the Spirit of Open Source,” Polygon Zero accuses the Matter Labs team, the development team behind zkSync, of using a significant amount of code from the Plonky2 proof system developed by Polygon Labs in their recently released Boojum library without proper attribution.

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Polygon Zero states that although Plonky2 is open source, Matter Labs did not provide proper attribution. In addition, Polygon Zero also accuses Matter Labs of misleadingly describing the performance comparison between Plonky2 and Boojum, with the founder of Matter Labs claiming that Boojum is more than 10 times faster than Plonky2.

The Polygon Zero team states that before being acquired by Polygon Labs, they were a small startup that raised $2 million in seed funding and operated for more than two years. Most of the development of Plonky2 and Starky was done without resources or recognition, and they would be unable to fight back if better-funded competitors used their work without attribution.

Eli Ben-Sasson, the founder of StarkWare, has also joined the debate. They urge Alex Gluchowski, the founder of Matter Labs, to publicly respond to these accusations.

zkSync’s Counterattack

Alex, the founder of Matter Labs, responded immediately, expressing disappointment with these unfounded accusations and stating that a detailed response will be published soon.

In the subsequent official response letter, Alex strongly denied Polygon Zero’s accusations.

He stated that today’s accusations are baseless, misleading, and come from a highly respected team, which is extremely disappointing.

When zkSync used code from Plonky2, they already provided clear attribution in their GitHub code repository. If the community can suggest a better attribution method, zkSync will vigorously apply it from now on.

He also provided detailed citations of Plonky2 and its authors, insisting that only about 5% of the Boojum code is based on Plonky2.

Regarding the misleading statements, Alex stated that the whole point of neutral third-party benchmark tests is to achieve fair comparisons, surpass market noise, and subtle differences in implementation. If one is not satisfied with the choice or implementation optimization of benchmark test functions (such as SHA256), why would they first use the code for benchmark testing and then endorse it?

Alex then attached relevant links as theoretical support for his response.

In response to Alex’s reply, storm from LianGuairadigm expressed agreement and believed that zkSync’s attribution could be better, but it is definitely not plagiarism, at most it can be called a bit careless.

However, the Chinese community of Manta Network stated that in fact, this code was created by Brandon, who is in Manta Network.

Comparison of ecological development

With the launch of zkSync’s zkEVM mainnet ZkSync Era in March 2023, its TVL once reached 700 million US dollars, compared to Polygon zkEVM’s current TVL of only 54 million US dollars.

ZkSync Era TVL, data source: L2BEAT

The focus of this debate, Boojum, is a proof system upgrade launched by zkSync Era on July 17th, which will assist the network in transitioning to a STARK-supported proof system.

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