Bitcoin Forum

https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/myetherwallet-co-founder-splits-launch-rival-platform/



MyEtherWallet Co-Founder Splits to Launch Rival Platform

MyEtherWallet is one of the popular and widely used wallets for holding Ethereum tokens. However, MyEtherWallet co-founder Taylor Monahan unexpectedly announced last Friday the launch of her own cryptocurrency wallet platform, MyCrypto.com, following the split from MyEtherWallet.

Taylor announced both news items in a long Medium post. She notes: “I was terrified—am terrified—at the potential harm this change will have on myself, 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. While contemplating this decision, I began to see that my inaction would be the only thing that guaranteed my failure.”

MyCrypto is currently a forked version of MyEtherWallet, but its team assured that they will soon launch an enhanced version of the website, along with desktop and mobile applications.

This sudden controversial move was a shock to the wallet users and many did not take it well.

    MyEtherWallet's abrupt change in branding to MyCrypto should have been announced using MyEtherWallet's social media accounts first. This is a very amateurish way of handling it. This is coming from an everyday user of MEW and its biggest fan.

    — Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) February 9, 2018

Though MyEtherWallet’s Taylor Monahan and Kosala Hemachandra did not reveal the exact reason for the split at this stage, both said the decision was based on mutual agreement.

Taylor, however, convinced most of the team members from MyEtherWallet to join her in building the new MyCrypto.com wallet platform. The official twitter handle of MyEtherWallet has also changed to be the official handle for MyCrypto.com, taking thousands of Twitter followers from MyEtherWallet to MyCrypto.com.

Taylor clarified that Kosala (aka “kvhnuke”) will now be the sole owner of MyEtherWallet. She wrote: “Kvhnuke remains in control of the MEW github repository, the MEW domain, the AWS instances, and the MyEtherWallet social media accounts.”
Kvhnuke’s response

After Taylor’s announcement, Kvhnuke put his side of the story in a Reddit post. Though both of them are telling the same narrative, it seems Kvhnuke did not take the hijacking of MyEtherWallet Twitter account that well.
Suggested articles

Kvhnuke wrote: “Alas, for reasons I cannot delve into here, our partnership had to end. During the transition yesterday, however, MEW’s Twitter account was switched from @myetherwallet to @mycrypto, and tens of thousands of MEW followers were left scratching their heads. Indeed, the change was unexpected, and I’m still in the process of determining the justification behind the switch, and how this issue will be resolved.”

Anyway, Kvhnuke now has to rebuild his MyEtherWallet team, which might not be an easy task at this stage. He also assured that the wallet platform will soon launch some new features, on which Kvhnuke is working.

“Furthermore, for those of you wondering where I’ve been or what I’ve been working on the past several months, I’ve been busy doing what I do best—so get ready for some new and exciting products/services in the pipeline,” Kvhnuke added.
Behind the curtain – Litigation

Although both Taylor and Kosala are saying that the split was mutual, the situation with the popular wallet platform is not so simple, as lawyer Badri Natarajan pointed out there was a dispute between the two co-founder, a common situation in the startup industry.

Natarajan says Kosala went to the California courts to file a suit against Taylor. He shared the accrued legal documents in a public drive, according to which, a long dispute occurred between Kosala and Taylor regarding the firm’s financial books. Responsible for development, Kosala asked Taylor to see the books of the company, but Taylor was not comfortable with that, which led to litigation.

The documents also revealed a negotiation for Taylor to sell her stake in MyEtherWallet to Kosala for $1 million. The documents also show that the firm was dissolved by Taylor, as of December 29, 2017, without any cooperation from Kosala.

Clearly, the situation with MyEhterWallet and MyCrypto.com is more complex than what the co-founders are telling the public. Natarajan raises serious questions: “what company is kvhnuke running now? Who actually owns and operates MEW? It could certainly have been transferred to another company—but has it been?”

Hmm, i hope that MyEtherWallet continues its operations. Do any of you guys know of a legit alternative? Or if you can access your wallet from some other interface, if you have the private key?

It could get nasty, I am glad I don't use their service but to those who are, I think it is better to pull out your coins...and be safe than sorry.

What will be the impact of this split on the MEW software? Will it continue be the norm for a hot wallet? Or the service will degrade?
They were flawless so far. I hope they continue the good service.

I see greed is really part and parcel of the crypto world. Hope it doesn't deteriorate to a misunderstanding and a silent war.

this very bad news for the myetherwallet user your correct mate  better to pull the coins investment from the myetherwalet to secured,
but have a question if the mew totally stop the operation what is the best wallet use for alternative.
but hoping mew management give some time to the user to pull out their coins and give an announcement date stop operations.

Have you tried METAMASK? It has been supported by MEW, so it is referable for their users. I am currently using it but when I'm about to send a token I connect it in MEW so that I can ensure that the token will be send without any problem. Overall I never encountered any problems so it is a good wallet for alternative in MEW.

There will be a competition between mew and mycrypto. I think that there will be a winner between both. but the demand looks same in my opinion. As long as the privatekey is the same and it can still be used in both of the website wallet. I think that mycrypto will be more actively update the github repository rather than khvnuke.

This split polemic makes all the users of MEW wallet worried. Maybe this feud will be more heated when one of his to be a winner. How do we deal with this problem, is there any safe alternative wallet besides MEW and MrCrypto?
It occurred to me to use a hardware wallet between Trezor and Nano Ledger. What is your advice?

Myetherwallet is very important in accessing some of your token because it is not available in desktop wallet like Jaxx or Exodus, I am also in search of a good alternative, but myetherwallet is not yet closing, let see what will come after they split up.

I thought that myetherwallet was Vitalik's project to be honest.

It's not really a big loss. Most people use a hardware eth wallet. Anyone who uses a Web wallet on a daily basis is kind of stupid. Too many unsecure variables with this kind of crypto wallet. If the website is hacked, could key log all private key inputs

Unsecured connection could also sniff data between pc and website

Now people will be forced to learn to use a hardware wallet

How does MyEtherWallet make money? I'm not really familiar with it, but it's a website with no ads.

Probably donations from the ethereum foundation since for a long time they had it listed as their official wallet.

Also they could've been charging a little % of transaction fees

That's what I was wondering, that maybe they charge a small percentage, but I guess that would have been apparent on the block explorer.

Its simple guys.

If taylor easily switched and hijacked the MEW twitter account into Mycrypto without notifying the co - founder. What more she can do about our wallet private keys.?

Get away from Mycrypto its a crook. they just get blinded by money.

For me i will stay on MEW because it is all the same. to serve the ethereum community with no strings attached

dudes, you really start such questions with scare people for whom myetherwallet is eth wallet out of competition. The fact is that so for me, the best resource. Not yet. I feel that my coins are safe here.

I'm going to stay with MEW as it's proved to be safe and reliable.