SAN FRANCISCO—Plaintiffs lawyers involved in the pioneering Tezos litigation, which could test how securities laws apply to initial coin offerings (ICOs), are in a simmering dispute over whether to split the case in two.

A federal judge in San Francisco last month named California law firm LTL Attorneys and Hung G. Ta, Esq. in New York to lead a set of federal class actions against Tezos and other defendants. The cases allege that the $232 million ICO Tezos conducted last year was an illegal offering of securities and seek to get back cryptocurrency invested in tezzies—the Tezos digital tokens which have yet to launch.