According to Foresight News, the bankrupt blockchain company BANKEX has sued ZKsync developer Matter Labs, alleging that former BANKEX employees Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev stole the company's technology and founded Matter Labs to build ZKsync. The complaint states that in 2017, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin approached BANKEX to build operating software for "Plasma", which was seen at the time as a way to reduce the cost of using Ethereum. Alexander Vlasov and Petr Korolev were employees of BANKEX at the time and were commissioned by BANKEX CEO Igor Khemel to complete the Plasma project. Vlasov is currently the head of research and development at Matter Labs, while Korolev is the founder of blockchain security company OXORIO. Alex Gluchowski, co-founder of Matter Labs, Dragonfly, a cryptocurrency native investment fund, and Chris Burniske, partner at Placeholder Capital and former co director of Matter Labs, have also been charged with alleged involvement in and knowledge of theft. A spokesperson for Matter Labs told CoinDesk in an email statement, 'We believe these allegations are completely unfounded. The focus of the complaint is that Matter Labs built ZKsync on top of the code originally developed by Bankex.'. This is completely wrong. ZKsync is an original technology and is not based on or derived from any code developed by Bankex. We uphold the integrity of our work and look forward to responding to these unfounded accusations in court upon receipt of the lawsuit
