⚡︎ CloudstrikeThunderbeing ∞

Firstly, there were two patents on the algorithm they took, one was issued *beginning* of this year. We want license fees at the least. Sorry to those that liked my previous post, I reworded this to be more precise. If they knew about the patent applications, then license fees could be recoverable from the beginning of their use of the proprietary tech (~2+ years) not from earlier this year. There are some things that point in that direction in my view, e.g. 1) GitHub posts like this, note what's in the quotes, which I read like pre-emptive non-infringement positioning github.com/near/mpc_old/pull… (the algo of course re-uses the invention with a minor tweak that make it less secure), and 2) they had hired a senior DFINITY engineering manager in April 2022, who I feel would have known full well about DFINITY efforts to patent major works. We need that Google doc referenced by that GitHub pull request; NEAR if you're reading this, deleting evidence won't be helpful, maybe you'd like to voluntarily share this. Secondly, it looks to us like their Confidential Key Derivation is basically derived from the vetKeys paper, and maybe they looked at our Rust implementation too. That wasn't patented, but completely wrong to go around passing off hard and substantial work by very serious cryptographers as your own, and also completely ridiculous. I'm sure Ilia is a more serious guy than that. We are not anti-NEAR, but this is obviously too much and has to be addressed. Note as well that passing off a competitor's academic work as your own to gain an advantage also transgresses various other laws around the world. But anyway, if this is what has happened, I'm sure Ilia, as a supporter of open source, will want proper credits and references to be added, and for their CKD article to explain where the math came from. We're busy but will be contacting them, first to try and resolve this amicably. Meanwhile, they also need to think hard about who they choose as friends. Some of the people that came after us for them are absolutely freaky and the worst web3 has to offer. Notably, we've heard no denial, nor apology.