StarkWare: Pioneer of STARK Technology

StarkWare has been applying STARK validity proofs to address Ethereum's scalability issues since 2018. The company launched StarkEx, which is based on a SaaS model, created the Cairo programming language, and built a decentralized network called Starknet that allows for custom logic.

StarkWare is committed to technological innovation and product delivery, supporting teams that promote Ethereum and STARK technology, striving to make products open-source, decentralized, and to position STARK as a public good. In the future, the company will focus on making Starknet a permissionless decentralized validity rollup governed by the Starknet Foundation.

STARK technology is based on integrity proofs, using mathematics to ensure the correctness of computations. This technology originates from the PCP concept of 1991, which was improved by StarkWare to allow small users to verify the operations of large institutions.

StarkWare Team

StarkWare was co-founded by Eli Ben-Sasson and others from the Israel Institute of Technology, with core members including:

• Eli Ben-Sasson: Co-founder and Chief Scientist, inventor of zkSNARKs
• Alessandro Chiesa: Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley
• Uri Kolodny: Co-founder and CEO, experienced entrepreneur
• Michael Riabzev: Co-founder and Chief Architect
• Oren Katz: Vice President of Engineering, a seasoned engineer with 20 years of experience

The company is valued at $8 billion and has received support from Vitalik, Paradigm, Sequoia, and others.

StarkEx

StarkEx is an application-specific Layer-2 scaling engine based on Ethereum, using STARK proofs to enable fast and low-cost transactions. It reduces the gas cost per transaction by batching multiple transactions and verifying them on-chain. StarkEx has been successfully applied in several projects, including dYdX and Immutable.

Starknet

Starknet is a permissionless decentralized validity rollup network that operates as an L2 network on Ethereum. It uses the Cairo programming language to write contracts and operating systems, supporting the deployment and scaling of various use cases. Starknet aims to provide higher scalability and performance for dApps while maintaining the composability and security of Ethereum.

Version Update

Starknet continues to undergo version updates, improvements include:

• Cairo 1.0 Language Improvement
• Performance improvements, introduced Rust serializer
• Off-chain data availability
• Account abstraction design optimization

Account System

Starknet adopts an account abstraction design, allowing users to customize account functionalities. Account contracts must include validate and execute functions to ensure security and flexibility.

Token Economics

The total supply of Starknet tokens is 10 billion, with the initial allocation as follows:

• 17% allocated to investors
• 32.9% allocated to core contributors
• 50.1% allocated to the foundation for community incentives, ecological development, etc.

The tokens will be used for transaction fees, staking, and governance. Tokens for core contributors and investors will have a 4-year lock-up period.

Business Model

1. Sell StarkEx technology services and charge customers service fees.
2. Collect transaction fees and MEV value through the StarkNet network, issue tokens to drive ecological development.

StarkWare, as a leading company in the zk rollups field, is expected to play an important role in Ethereum's scaling solutions with its strong technical capabilities and excellent team.