Former employees of defunct blockchain company Bankex have filed a lawsuit against Matter Labs, alleging they stole company technology to launch their own project, ZKsync. According to the complaint, these employees, Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev, were tasked by CEO Igor Khemel to develop operational software for ‘Plasma,’ a technology designed to reduce Ethereum’s usage costs. This task was assigned to them in 2017, when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin approached Bankex. The lawsuit states that Vlasov and Korolev subsequently left Bankex and founded Matter Labs while developing ZKsync. The suit also names Matter Labs co-founders Alex Gluchowski, Dragonfly, a crypto-native investment fund, and former Matter Labs co-director Chris Burniske as having knowledge of the alleged theft. Matter Labs has dismissed these claims, asserting that their technology for ZKsync is original, not derived from any code developed by Bankex.