Matter Labs Drops All ‘ZK’ Trademark Applications After Being Slammed

Matter Labs, the company behind the zkSync Ethereum layer 2 network, has dropped all of its trademark applications for the term "ZK" after criticism from other industry members. The company had filed applications in nine countries the previous week, and co-founders and executives at StarkWare, Polygon, Algorand, Polyhedra and Kakarot publicly condemned the move as an attempt to annex a public good. In a post on X, Matter Labs said it would have been impossible to agree on a group of people perceived as credibly neutral by nearly everyone.