Left hand Bitcoin, right hand Ethereum: Starknet is building a new cornerstone of the digital world

Translation and proofreading: Starknet Chinese Community

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• Introducing STARK proof technology into the Bitcoin network significantly expands the application scenarios of Bitcoin
• Make Ethereum's digital commons more inclusive
• Flexibly leverage the advantages of Ethereum and Bitcoin

Financial system in urgent need of reshaping

The Starknet Foundation is committed to building a world of power sharing, creative compensation, and equal opportunities for everyone. As Starknet L2 gradually becomes the first protocol to support both Bitcoin and Ethereum settlements, it is necessary to discuss this vision: how this vision has guided us to this day; why we believe the Bitcoin network can help us achieve this vision.

The limitations of the current digital world are obvious: funds, data, and power are concentrated in the hands of a few, making it difficult for most people to access opportunities and participation. This lack of diversity, creativity, and innovation in the entire Internet is not the original intention of the Internet. However, as with the development trajectory of many things, we often choose to turn a blind eye to the problem because we are accustomed to the status quo, until cracks appear in the system and we are startled to realize the problem.

The rise of digital gold

The financial crisis of 2008 was a moment of system collapse. We have seen the limitations of the traditional financial system at a painful cost: the inability to establish absolute trust in financial institutions, and we also realize the urgent need for a mechanism that allows everyone to independently control their assets. Thus, Bitcoin was born.

Bitcoin was born in 2009, opening up a long-envisioned but unrealized new era in finance. For the first time, we have a truly global currency system - no need for intermediaries, no need for traditional bank accounts, free from government intervention and policy regulation. This community-driven monetary system is open to everyone, regardless of wealth, social status, or nationality.

As with many emerging technologies, Bitcoin early encountered technical bottlenecks and negative impacts caused by malicious participants, which doubly constrained its popularization. Slow transaction speed, complex user experience, limited token use cases, and the early labeling as 'mainly used for illegal activities' have all become obstacles to Bitcoin's development. Therefore, although Bitcoin has always been well-known to the public, it has never been able to break through the mainstream market, nor unleash its full potential to change the world.

The Birth of Global Public Infrastructure

Six years after the birth of Bitcoin, another important player in the blockchain field emerged. Unlike Bitcoin, which focuses solely on monetary attributes, Ethereum aims to establish a global public infrastructure platform where people can create various decentralized applications including monetary systems, identity authentication, governance mechanisms, and more. In a sense, Ethereum is a global computer. However, like Bitcoin, Ethereum was initially limited by its own technical bottlenecks: complex user experience, new conceptual frameworks, and a brand-new programming language all hindered the initial popularity of Ethereum.

As of today, although there are many L1, L2, and L3 projects emerging in the market, Bitcoin and Ethereum are still the largest and most influential projects in the Web3 field, and they are also the most hopeful key forces to popularize this world-changing technology to everyone. And this is exactly where Starknet comes into play.

Achieve Web3 scalability

While Starknet was initially deployed on Ethereum, it is not just for Ethereum. Starknet aims to use STARK proof technology to provide scaling solutions for any blockchain, creating a secure and trusted digital world through complete verifiability. From the beginning of the project, we have envisioned that this possibility is equally applicable to the Bitcoin network. After years of research and exploration, we now have the ability to put this vision into practice.

Starknet is building the necessary infrastructure and establishing corresponding partnerships, which not only signifies great progress but also is enough to be inspiring. But perhaps more anticipated is the new possibilities that this step will bring, and its significant importance to the entire digital world.

The New Cornerstone of the Digital World

By supporting developers to use the same set of code to build applications that can settle on both the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, we will greatly expand the application scenarios of Bitcoin, and make Ethereum's digital commons more inclusive through faster transactions, higher scalability, and lower costs. Developers will have the freedom to choose between the two major mainstream blockchains for the first time, allowing them to flexibly leverage the advantages of Ethereum and Bitcoin based on specific application scenarios.

Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision was to build a digital peer-to-peer payment system that could operate on a large scale without the need for centralized institutions, but to this day, it has not been fully realized. By introducing STARK proof technology into the Bitcoin network, we are helping to fully realize this technological blueprint. This will trigger a huge revolution in financial inclusion and inclusivity, open up new markets, and lay a solid foundation for completely reshaping the digital world. All of this not only aligns closely with Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision, but also with the ideals that the Starknet Foundation has been pursuing all along.

Today, we are at the forefront of this exciting revolution, and Starknet is leading the way.