Paradigm Accused Of Copying Code For Rust-Based Ethereum Client

Erigon To Wind Down Sup­port For Akula

Par­a­digm, one of the top cryp­to ven­ture cap­i­tal firms, is under fire from a devel­op­er team that is unwind­ing its flag­ship project and accus­ing the firm of copy­ing its open-source code.

On Nov. 24, Erigon announced that it is wind­ing down sup­port for Aku­la, a Rust imple­men­ta­tion of OpenEthereum. The team said they decid­ed to sun­set the project after becom­ing aware of a com­pet­ing prod­uct from an enti­ty with incom­pa­ra­ble resources and influence.

“We have come to a deci­sion to unwind our tech­no­log­i­cal, man­age­r­i­al, and finan­cial sup­port for Aku­la,” the blog post said. “We think that the oth­er project will, after it is open-sourced, become bet­ter sup­port­ed and more pop­u­lar, and will very quick­ly match and over­take Aku­la in functionality.”

“Sad­ly we can­not out­com­pete multi­bil­lion VCs who copy-paste our archi­tec­ture and code (open-source, right?),” tweet­ed Artem Vorot­nikov, the cre­ator of Akula. 

Erigon not­ed that Akula’s devel­op­ment was fund­ed by grants, pre­dict­ing that it will be hard to secure future fund­ing now that it has com­pe­ti­tion from a major enti­ty. While Erigon did not name who its out­sized com­peti­tor is, observers were quick to point their fin­gers at Par­a­digm on social media.

“It’s a sad day for Aku­la, said Twit­ter user 0xalti. “Rather than con­tribute to the open-sourced project, Par­a­digm chose to launch a rust imple­men­ta­tion under their own brand, using much of the code writ­ten by the Aku­la team.”

Paradigm Responds

But Paradigm’s CTO, Geor­gios Kon­stan­topou­los, insists the firm did not fork Akula’s code.

“Par­a­digm is build­ing Reth, a Rust Ethereum Exe­cu­tion Lay­er,” Kon­stan­topou­los tweet­ed. “Reth is not a fork or a rewrite of any oth­er client imple­men­ta­tion… Reth does not include code from any exist­ing client but stands on the shoul­ders of giants includ­ing Geth, Erigon, and Akula.” 

He added that Par­a­digm is build­ing Reth to pro­mote client diver­si­ty, call­ing Akula’s deci­sion to cease devel­op­ment a loss for the space. “We are build­ing the client we wish exist­ed, and the com­po­nents that we our­selves want to build on top of,” he wrote.

Many in the com­mu­ni­ty are skep­ti­cal of Kon­stan­topou­los’ depic­tion of events, with Korot­nikov shar­ing screen­shots show­ing Paradigm’s CTO ask­ing Aku­la about its code in inti­mate detail.

“It seems like the feel­ing from the Aku­la and Erigon teams is that you guys went out of your way to obscure your plans and goals while get­ting info from them,” tweet­ed Wil­son Cusak, a web3 developer. 

Licensing Theory

0xExecLayer, a retired soft­ware engi­neer, spec­u­lat­ed Par­a­digm may have opt­ed to build its own Rust client to side­step Akula’s use of the Affero Gen­er­al Pub­lic License, which impos­es strin­gent con­di­tions on the repro­duc­tion of code despite being open-source. 

“The con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry here is that Par­a­digm did a clean-room rewrite of Aku­la so that a port­fo­lio com­pa­ny can use it as a fast EVM exe­cu­tion lay­er (Aku­la has AGPL that can be annoy­ing to deal with),” they said.

Not every­one is unhap­py with Par­a­digm though. 

“I don’t real­ly see the prob­lem,” said Dot­ta, a web3 devel­op­er. “Open-source is all about learn­ing from and build­ing on one anoth­er… I can’t wait to see Reth.” 0xfoobar, a pop­u­lar devel­op­er and influ­encer, echoed the sen­ti­ment.