Blockchain
Layer-2 blockchain protocols took the spotlight in 2023, bringing major performance improvements to a variety of platforms and services operating in the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem.
Proof without knowledge has been key in the rollout of a variety of layer 2s, with the technology pioneered by the decentralized scaling network Starknet. StarkWare, the technology company behind the scaling platform, has outlined plans to further enhance its Layer-2 network to accommodate an expected increase in users and developers through the remainder of the year.
Cointelegraph spoke with Eli Ben-Sasson, president and co-founder of StarkWare, to unpack the key points outlined in a 2023 roadmap for Starknet. Chief among a list of tasks are performance improvements centered around higher throughput and reduced latency of the Starknet network.
Ben-Sasson highlighted the focus on performance upgrades that are expected to deliver significantly higher transactions per second (TPS) than on Ethereum’s mainnet at lower gas costs:
“The most important thing is that builders and developers have high throughput so they can actually build. Starknet is about increasing the compute capabilities of Ethereum and we just want to give this raw power to developers.”
Starknet v0.12.0 is expected to be released in the next month and is the culmination of a six-month sprint moving Starknet’s development stack to a Rust-based Sequencer, as well as an open-source project that built a Rust-Cairo VM (virtual machine).
StarkWare has made its Cairo programming language compiler open source in early 2023, with the language aimed at boosting the development of zk rollup and proof-of-validity-powered decentralized applications (DApps).
Related: Privacy, scaling disks use cases for zero-knowledge technology
Ben-Sasson added that Starknet continues to pursue an ambitious goal of processing at least 10 times the throughput of Ethereum at a tenth of the cost. He highlighted StarkEx’s ability to deliver significant TPS on dYdX decentralized exchange. StarkEx is another layer 2 scaling engine developed by StarkWare.
At times, dYdX processes up to 54 transactions per second, while Ethereum’s average TPS is around 10 to 12. Ben-Sasson also noted that these dYdX transactions are about four to five times larger than those on Ethereum, which bodes well for Starknet’s enhanced scaling capabilities in the near future:
“We often experience practical TPS or gas consumption many times greater than what Ethereum can handle. I am confident that this will be repeated on Starknet as well.”
Performance improvements have been prioritized due to developer and user feedback highlighting delays in transaction processing on Starknet. The next port of call is transaction fee reduction, which will be addressed by targeting the cost of storing data on Ethereum’s mainnet.
“We will be rolling out Volition, which will allow users to choose whether they want their data on- or off-chain and will be part of the base layer of the Starknet system.”
Ben-Sasson said the release of off-chain data availability will complement Ethereum’s evolving “Proto-Danksharding” enhancement proposal EIP-4844, which will introduce a new type of transaction that carries binary large objects, or “blobs.” The EIP essentially aims to offer cheaper transactions.
Starknet is also aiming for faster finality further down the 2023 roadmap, which will lead to shorter and fixed interval block times on the network. This will be implemented with the introduction of a fee market to prioritize Starknet’s network resources based on users’ willingness to pay for transactions, inspired by conventional market systems:
“Market mechanisms are a very good way to solve this. Blockchain did not invent this, blockchains took this from just the conventional world. This way you prioritize resources and let your users signal this.”
A number of Ethereum layer-2 protocols have started rolling out zk rollups to further enhance efforts to offer faster and cheaper transactions to the smart contract blockchain network. This includes Polygon and ConsenSys, among others.
