The Protocol: Another Episode in the Layer-2 Teams Drama
Summary
Matter Labs faced backlash for trademarking "ZK," a term central to zero-knowledge cryptography used in layer-2 rollups. Competitors like Polygon and Starkware criticized the move, calling it an attack on the open-source ethos of crypto. Matter Labs withdrew the trademark application after a week of controversy. Consensus 2024 focused on policy, regulation, AI, and Bitcoin scaling. A new company, Ark Labs, aims to compete with Bitcoin's Lightning Network for blockchain scalability.
