Polygon's zero-knowledge proof team, Polygon Zero, published a post accusing Matter Labs, the zkSync development team, of including a significant amount of copy-pasted source code from the Plonky2 library in their recently released proof system named Boojum. According to Polygon Zero, the copied code lacks proper attribution to the original copyright or creators.
Matter Labs/zkSync talk a lot about ethos. They’ve centered their marketing around the Ethereum Ethos, professing to be “scaling the ethos and technology of Ethereum.” They recently released a ZK Credo, centered around three core properties. The first one is integrity, described as “doing the right thing... even when no one else is looking or will ever know.”
Taking others’ work and representing it as your own isn’t consistent with the Ethereum Ethos. The Ethereum community deserves better.
Matter Labs, on the other hand, denies the accusations made by Polygon Zero and claims that the code in question includes a clear reference to the source in one line at the top of the file. A spokesperson from Matter Labs stated that Polygon's article contains "false claims," and that the new Boojum high-performance proof system utilizes only 5% of Plonky2's code, which is appropriately attributed in the first line of their module.
In the blockchain industry, projects often release code under open-source licenses, which means external developers can read, copy, and sometimes contribute to the code. However, community norms and most open-source licenses typically require third-party developers to acknowledge the source when using code from elsewhere.
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