The split MyEtherWallet - what really happened with the popular Ethereum-service

The disagreements between the founders of MyEtherWallet, which became known a few days ago, led to the emergence of contradictory and not always relevant rumors in the community. Nevertheless, the service continues to operate under the same name and with the same user base, albeit without an officially registered company, on behalf of which its activities would be conducted.

The story began to develop after on the night of Friday, February 9, the official Twitter account MyEtherWallet changed its name to MyCrypto without warning. Many users suggested that the account was compromised, but it soon became clear that it represents the same product, and some developers carried out the "fork" of the project and rebranding.

The tweet was published on behalf of Taylor Monahan (tayvano), one of the co-founders of the project, and also contained a link to the blog entry, which describes the history of the creation of MyEtherWallet up to the present day.

However, the fact that the familiar MyEtherWallet site remained under the former name and did not mention anything about the renaming, could not but embarrass many users. And given the growing number of different account hacks and phishing attacks in the crypto industry, the reasons for the alarm were understandable.

Taylor Monahan later confirmed that the MyCrypto site is real by duplicating the record on Reddit and signing it with a Keybase account. However, on the next day, another co-founder of MyEtherWallet Kosala Hemachandra presented his own version of the events.

"For reasons I can not disclose, our partnership [with Taylor Monahan] should have been completed. However, yesterday during this process, the Twitter account MEW was changed from @myetherwallet to @mycrypto, leaving tens of thousands of followers in perplexity. It was really unexpected, and I'm still trying to find an excuse for this, and I'm thinking about how this issue can be resolved, "Hemachandra wrote.

Despite the lack of predictability from both sides of the conflict, today the picture is as follows:

MyEtherWallet and MyCrypto exist in parallel, offering virtually identical services
At least 10 former MEW employees, including Taylor Monahan, are now working on MyCrypto. Hemachandra confirmed at Reddit that the majority of employees have gone to MyCrypto, while the latter claim that their project counts 20 people.
Twitter-Accumulation MyCrypto has more than 80,000 followers who previously subscribed to the MEW account. The new @ MyEtherWallet account currently has about 7,000 followers.
Both teams also issued traditional assurances that they intend to continue working on the innovations, quality and safety of their projects. Since purse users have access to their private keys, in theory they can use both services, including hardware wallets. The latter, however, needs additional confirmation, as well as a decision about which and two services should be considered "real".

"Now you have a choice: use MEW or MyCrypto. The team that I have assembled will build and develop MyCrypto and its infrastructure. We will do our best to support those who need help, no matter what product they use, "says Taylor Monahan.

It should be noted that the saga around MyEtherWallet and MyCrypto is likely to continue. So, ETHNews writes that since December 14 of the last year Kosala Hemachandra and Taylor Monahan are fighting a legal battle. As it became known, Hemachandra for several months sought from Monakhan to disclose key information about the financial activities of the company.

At the same time, lawyer Badri Nataradzhan, who claims to have no connection with any of the parties to the conflict, conducted his own analysis of the situation. Referring to court documents, he writes that Hemachandra negotiated with Monahan to buy full control over MyEtherWallet LLC for $ 1 million, insisting that he has every right to study financial documents of the company. Monakhan, however, refused to do so, and a corresponding lawsuit was filed.

Its consideration will be held March 27 at the Supreme Court of California in Los Angeles.

Recall, in January, a number of sources in social networks released information that cybercriminals hacked servers MyEtherWallet, replacing DNS. The team MyEtherWallet these statements, however, denied.