Matter Labs, the company behind the Layer-2 Blockchain Zksync, has been sued by Bankex, a closed digital asset banking platform, for intellectual property theft.

Former Banex employees Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev stole the company’s technology to start Matter Labs, which received over $ 450 million in venture capital financing and has become an important player in the blockchain industry, Bankex CEO Igor Khmel and Banex Foundation, alleged in a complaint that was lodged Mar. 19 with New York State Supreme Court.

The complaint claimed that Bankex was contacted by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Butterin in 2017 to build operational software for “plasma”, a technology that was seen as a way to make Ethereum cheaper to use.

According to the complaint, Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev Banex employees were at the time and was given the task of Bankex CEO Igor Khemel to finish the plasma project.

The complaint claimed that Vlasov and Korolev secretly secretly developed “a competing company, Matter Labs, through which they intended to appropriate Bankchain technology for their own use and advantage and to compete with Bankex.” In addition, the complaint claimed that the two developers secretly transferred “Bankex’s technology to Matter Labs and hidden developed and stored operational code bases” using the company’s resources and financing.

Vlasov is currently the leader of F&U at Matter Labs, and Korolev is the founder of the blockchain security company Oxorio, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Matter Labs co-founder Alex Gluchowski, Crypto-Native Investment Fund Dragonfly and Chris Burnisk, a partner in placeholder Capital and a former co-director of Matter Labs, are also sued for their alleged involvement and knowledge of theft.

“We believe these claims are completely without profit,” a spokesman at Matter Labs Coindesk said in an E -mail declaration. “The driving force of the complaint is that Matter Labs built Zksync on the code originally developed on Bankex. This is categorically false. Zksync is original technology that is not based on or originating from any code developed by Bankex. We stand by the integrity of our work and look forward to tackling these baseless accusations of the court when we are served.”

Dragonfly, burns and Korolev did not respond to any more requests for comment.

Bankex -Advokat Clayton Mahaffey told Coindesk in a statement that the company “prefers not to comment on the matter further at this time, except to repeat his belief that the claims in the complaint are well -founded and that it is looking forward to its day in court.”

Read more: Matter Labs accuses polygon of spreading “untrue claims” with coding copying claims