Entrepreneur Joel Ditz filed a lawsuit against ConsenSys, the developer of the wallet MetaMask, accusing it of intellectual property theft. CoinDesk reports this.
According to him, the browser wallet is based on his Vapor project.
Ditz claims that the idea originated six months before the Ethereum blockchain launch in July 2015. In November 2014, he allegedly presented Vapor to Ethereum luminaries Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood, “and received initial approval” for its creation, as well as support in obtaining a grant from the Ethereum Foundation for $30,000.
According to the lawsuit, in March 2015 Ditz invited two programmers Martin Beche and Aaron Davis to work on the wallet’s code.
Ditz planned to create an open-source project and, according to the roadmap, monetize it later by charging users for switching between different cryptocurrencies.
However the allocated funds were barely enough for two months of development. They failed to attract external financing, notably from the Y Combinator accelerator.
As a result, by May 2015 work on Vapor ceased and Ditz shifted to other projects. The entrepreneur did not attach significance to when Aaron Davis blocked his access to their shared Slack server and GitHub repositories, as he believed the browser wallet idea had no prospects.
Subsequently, Davis moved to work at ConsenSys and, together with programmer Dan Finlay, created the MetaMask wallet, which was launched in 2016.
Ditz alleges that ConsenSys intentionally concealed his involvement in creating their browser wallet and even allegedly threatened the journalist who, in an article published in November 2021, named him the founder of MetaMask. He also accused Davis of betrayal and collusion with the company.
According to the entrepreneur, he has gathered evidence supporting the link between the Vapor and MetaMask projects.
“These were things Vitalik specifically asked me to do. But ConsenSys did not compensate me at all. So this looks like a fabricated insider game”, said Ditz.
The plaintiff is convinced that he can prove in court his role as a co-founder of MetaMask.
In turn, a ConsenSys spokesperson said that Joel Ditz “falsely portrays himself as a founder of MetaMask, trying to sell tokens or raise investments from unsuspecting investors around the world”.
“Joel Ditz is not a founder of MetaMask, has no relation to MetaMask or any of its technologies, and we hope the court will quickly grant these unfounded claims,” he added.
The case will be heard by the San Francisco state court.
In July, ConsenSys said it had sufficient funds to continue operations amid rumors of talks about a potential capital injection.