Taylor Monahan who launched MyEtherWallet (MEW) in 2015 with co-founder Kosala Hemachandra, has announced the launch of rival wallet service called MyCrypto. The new wallet is a competing version of MEW; both look more like competing brands than complementary services. MyEtherWallet, one of the most famous and widely used Ether wallets, is famous for its great UX and its friendly interface. MyCrypto claims to be relevant as a “scaling” effort. This is what Taylor Monahan, who is one of the founders of MyEtherWallet, explained in a Medium blog.
The Future of MEW
The new service won’t be a termination of MEW. Instead, the domain will remain active and its co-founder controls the MEW GitHub repository, social media accounts, and AWS. Ms. Monahan stated in a blog post that: “MyEtherWallet LLC was sufficient for the early stages of growth. MyCrypto is designed with next-level scaling in mind from the beginning.” Monahan assembled a team over the past nine months, and will now be building the wallet, providing support, educating, and ensuring that MyCrypto is a safe product.
Monahan Taylor continued saying that “I was terrified - am terrified - at the potential harm this change will have on me, the team, and/or the Ethereum community but ultimately, the risks created by continuing down the road we were on are greater than the risks of splitting to a new brand, new company, new name, and new domain.” Ms. Monahan however, assured users of both wallets. Both MyEtherWallet and MyCrypto are building and improving the infrastructure behind their respective wallets.
Uncertainty Over the Split
The new wallet, MyCrypto has launched its website and plans to go live with a desktop version soon and a mobile app in coming months. Although MyEtherWallet (MEW) was the initiative of Monahan Taylor and Kosala Hemachandra, Taylor doesn’t seem to have told her co-founder Kosala. As a result, the surprise looked like a rebrand to many. This unleashed speculation about the possibility of a potential hack. Also, Taylor appears the only person, trying to promote the new MyCrypto wallet to the Ethereum community.
I don’t know enough about the MyCrypto / MyEtherWallet situation to comment and I don’t want to spread FUD but there is clearly something going on.
1. No company abruptly rebrands overnight without any announcement
2. People are still able to use MyEtherWallet, something’s weird– Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) 9 February 2018
Following the new brand announcement, Kosala (aka “kvhnuke”) hit back via new MEW twitter account, writing: “MyEtherWallet is safe and functioning normally. You may continue to use MyEtherWallet as you normally would, your wallets have not been compromised. At present, we are dealing with what we believe to be an unlawful, social media account switch”
Legal Battle
Kosala also confirmed that the vast majority of the MEW team with Kvhnuke left MyEtherWallet. However, he avoided explaining the nuances of the split, opting to assure MEW’s active operation will continue under his management. The split between MEW co-founders might have taken a turn for the worst. There is a file at the Los Angeles County Superior Court titled “Kosala Hemachandra v Taylor Monahan & MyEtherWallet LLC, Case No. BS171730”. The file concerns MEW and its finance control. As the story develops, we will be updating our readers. For now, our team has been using MEW without any trouble.
