On Thursday on the ETHDenver stage in Colorado, blockchain software company StarkWare, developer of the Ethereum Layer-2 network Starknet, announced that it plans to launch a new open source zero-knowledge proof program called Stwo.
Currently in development, Stwo implements Circle STARK to enable demonstration of “ultra-efficiency” in reducing latency and processing costs. According to the StarkWare team, this will lower transaction fees and circumvent the constraints of Stone, StarkWare’s existing prover.
“With fast speed comes great potential,” said StarkWare COO Oren Katz in a statement shared with The Block. “Stwo will bring new possibilities for expansion. And it’s open source from day one under the Apache 2.0 Permissive Free Software License, so everyone can use it.”
The prover, the engine that powers Starknet’s technology stack, is a system that can verify that a transaction is valid without having to share all the details of the main blockchain. This is done by creating a special kind of cryptographic proof to compress the transaction.
“It’s especially exciting that just a week after the new Circle STARK protocol was announced as a theoretical breakthrough, the protocol is already buzzing with the development of an incredibly fast prover,” said Katz.
“The prover is the magic wand of STARK technology. “This plays a key role in scaling Ethereum,” he added. “Implementing Circle STARK on Stwo will help power Ethereum scaling by generating proofs more efficiently.”
According to the team, Circle STARK, developed in collaboration with cryptography experts at Polygon Labs, is a variant of the proof widely used in layer 2 scaling solutions, allowing Starknet to perform faster finalization at both layer 1 and layer 2.
Starknet was launched in alpha state on the Ethereum mainnet in November 2021. The StarkWare team has since progressively open-sourced elements of the Starknet stack, including the Cairo 1.0 programming language, Papyrus client software, and the Starknet sequencer (ordering component). Process multiple off-chain transactions in batches before submitting them to the Ethereum blockchain.
StarkWare previously open-sourced its existing Stone prover under the same license in August 2023, and plans to eventually fully open-source its Starknet stack.
Criticism of Starknet token unlocking
This announcement comes just over a week after the launch of Starknet’s native token. Started trading on a centralized exchange strong
-5.64%
Airdrop claims for token distribution began on February 20th.
The initial distribution included 728 million STRK, representing 7.28% of the total supply of 10 billion. Based on a November snapshot examining transaction and interaction volume on the network, approximately 1.297 million wallets were deemed eligible for this deployment. This eligibility has been extended to protocol guild members, EIP authors, individual stakers, and open source developers outside of the web3 space.
However, the broader distribution plan has drawn criticism from some, as Starkware’s core contributors and investors were set to receive more than 1.3 billion STRK, or 13% of the total supply, on April 15, less than two months after the token’s launch.
On February 20, Starkware said it would stick to its plan, but just a few days later it changed its launch schedule based on user feedback, lowering the percentage of initially unlocked tokens from 13% to 0.64%. After that, unlock it.
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