The wealth effect of Arbitrum's airdrop has ignited confidence in the market for L2. Optimism and Arbitrum have both tried strategies for ecosystem development and attracting users through airdrops, and the market share has reflected this. The four giants of Layer2: Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync, and StarkNet, now only the latter two have yet to announce airdrops. StarkWare, with a valuation of $8 billion, naturally attracts attention.
At the same time, StarkNet is a project that our community is deeply involved in, and we believe in its huge potential. We have invested a lot of resources and look forward to reaping the rewards by the end of 2023.
Introduction to StarkWare
- Project Overview
StarkWare, the parent company of StarkNet, was founded in 2018 and is located in Israel. Its main products include the scalability engine StarkEx built on the Ethereum mainnet and the general-purpose ZK-Rollup StarkNet. The StarkWare technical team has over ten years of research and engineering experience in the field of ZKP. In 2018, they first proposed using STARK proof of validity to solve the scalability problem of Ethereum and achieve large-scale scalability.
- Content Introduction
StarkEx: A Layer 2 scalability engine designed for applications, providing dedicated Rollup technology services for each application. It has been officially launched on the Ethereum mainnet since 2020 and is relatively mature. Currently, well-known projects based on StarkEx include Sorare, ImmutableX, dYdX, ApeX, and others.
StarkNet: A general-purpose Rollup that can deploy any smart contract without the need for custom development for specific applications. StarkNet was launched on the Ethereum mainnet in November 2021 and currently has 50+ projects deployed on the mainnet and 100+ projects deployed on the testnet.
StarkWare has raised a total of $273 million in seven rounds of financing. In January 2018, it completed a $6 million seed round of financing, and in July of the same year, it received a $12 million grant from the Ethereum Foundation. In March 2021, it completed a $75 million Series B financing led by Paradigm, and in November of the same year, it completed a $50 million Series C financing, with investors including Paradigm, Alameda Research, Three Arrows Capital, and others. On May 25, 2022, StarkWare completed a $100 million Series D financing with a valuation of $8 billion, led by Greenoaks Capital, Coatue, Tiger Global, and other participants.
- Technical Architecture and Highlights
Similar to other zk-rollup solutions based on proof of validity, StarkNet and StarkEx achieve scalability on Ethereum through "off-chain computation-generating zk proofs-on-chain verification." However, they have achieved high transaction processing speed and low cost through the innovative zk-STARK zero-knowledge proof algorithm, zk-friendly programming language Cairo, and SHARP shared prover.
2.1 Innovative zk-STARK Zero-Knowledge Proof Algorithm
zk-STARK is a zero-knowledge proof algorithm proposed by StarkWare founder Eli Ben Sasson in a paper in 2018. It stands for Zero-Knowledge Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge and has excellent scalability and transparency.
Transparency: ZK-STARK can work in a trusted setup without a common reference string (CRS). Instead, it uses publicly verifiable randomness to establish interaction between the prover and verifier, reducing user trust assumptions and improving the security of STARK-based protocols.
Scalability: STARK has logarithmic compression properties for verification, enabling faster verification. When the time required to prove a proposition is T, the time required to verify the proof is only log(T). This property allows STARK to achieve scalability through recursion, low cost, and reduced delay in large-scale composite proposition, among other features.
2.2 Cairo Programming Language
Cairo is a Turing-complete programming language released by the StarkWare team in 2020, allowing developers unfamiliar with STARK to use Cairo to implement verifiable computation.
Programs written in Cairo can directly convert computation results into provable polynomial equations through the STARK prover, enabling good compatibility between smart contracts and zero-knowledge proofs. Cairo is a programming language designed for STARK, and the combination of the two can maximize the potential of STARK. However, the disconnect between Cairo and the EVM ecosystem has always been a problem that needs to be addressed.
In late October 2022, StarkNet announced the development of ZK-EVM using Cairo, and the Ethereum client Nethermind is working on developing a compiler called Warp to compile Solidity to Cairo, achieving compatibility between StarkWare and EVM. The team claims that Warp already supports rewriting Uniswap V3 as Cairo code. As StarkNet enters production, the actual effects of different solution compatibility will be tested.
2.3 SHARP Shared Prover
SHARP, or Shared Prover, is the prover for generating zero-knowledge proofs for StarkEx and StarkNet. SHARP can generate validity proofs for both StarkEx and StarkNet simultaneously, allowing aggregation of different StarkEx applications and transactions on StarkNet into a single STARK proof. This improves the capacity of STARK proofs, resulting in faster transaction processing speed and reduced latency.
Recursive proof is a cutting-edge technology for the next generation, applicable not only to some hard-coded logic but also to general computation. After combining SHARP with STARK, the entire StarkWare ecosystem can achieve the recursive nature of transactions, bringing ultimate scalability.
According to official data from StarkNet, there are already over 100 projects deployed and running in the StarkNet ecosystem, covering diverse areas such as wallets, cross-chain bridges, DeFi, NFT, and more.
- StarkNet's PoS Innovation
For a long time, PoS has been known as the consensus mechanism for L1 projects. StarkNet is the first L2 Rollup project to adopt PoS. As an L2 project, PoS-based StarkNet can break the MEVA dilemma that has long existed on L2, reduce user payment costs, improve platform experience, alleviate network congestion, and greatly increase the upper limit of L2 income.