In May 2022, Ethereum Layer 2 developer StarkWare announced the completion of a $100 million Series D round of financing at a valuation of $8 billion, making StarkWare one of the projects with the highest valuations in the primary market, far surpassing the current popular Layer 1 companies. Chain Aptos and Sui.
As of October 25, the official website data shows that the TVL in the StarkWare ecosystem is 461 million US dollars, a total of 260 million transactions have been made, the cumulative transaction volume is 732 billion US dollars, and 79 million NFTs have been minted. StarkEx has been online for more than two years, and the StarkNet Alpha mainnet has also been launched. Below, PANews will take stock of the well-known projects in the StarkWare ecosystem.
Conceptual review of STARK series: STARKs, StarkWare, StarkNet and StakEx
Before introducing the ecology, first sort out some basic concepts in StarkWare and the relationship between them.
STARKsis a proof system that can prove and verify computations, handle large computations, generate proofs for the correctness of computations, and verify proofs in very few steps. STARKs can play a key role in the scalability of blockchains, allowing computations to be done off-chain, saving costs and leaving few verifications that require small portions of computations to be done on-chain. Layer 2 solutions using STARKs can batch thousands of transactions and then verify their validity on-chain using a single STARK proof.
StarkWareIt is a technical team that provides expansion solutions based on STARK technology. It provides two Ethereum expansion solutions based on STARK: StarkEx and StarkNet.
StarkExProvides a scaling solution for creating permissioned, specific applications, STARK proofs are generated off-chain, and then proofs are sent to STARKs for verification on-chain, equivalent to a ZK Rollup SaaS (Software as a service). Therefore, StarkEx is suitable for deploying specific applications, including dYdX, Immutable, Sorare, DeversiFi, and Celer. They are independent of each other and have no composability. Data such as TVL will also be calculated separately.
It is worth mentioning that the relationship between StarkWare and the project party using StarkEx is more harmonious, and the two parties are in a cooperative relationship. In other expansion solutions, the code base of the main developer is usually forked directly, but there is no connection between the projects, such as the code base of Metis and Boba Network based on Optimism, and the code base of ZKSwap based on zkSync.
StarkNetIt is a permissionless Layer 2 network developed by StarkWare, on which anyone can deploy smart contracts developed in the Cairo language.
Compared with StarkEx, contracts on StarkNet can interact with other contracts above. If composability between different applications is required, it needs to be developed on StarkNet.
In the token design announced by StarkWare in July this year, it is clearly stated that 9% of StarkNet tokens are allocated to "people who work for StarkNet and provide support and development for its underlying technology", such as the StarkEx L2 system used in the past. The official statement includes "community supply will be distributed to StarkEx users", etc. The snapshot took place on June 1, 2022. In addition, 9% of the tokens are used for community rebates, which are used to pay the cost of joining StarkNet from Ethereum; 12% are used to fund StarkNet research and work; 8.1% are used to support the StarkNet community, and the specific method is determined by the community.
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StarkEx
StarkEx launched its mainnet in June 2020 and has been in operation for more than two years. The StarkEx clients listed on the StarkWare official website include dYdX, Sorare, Immutable, rhino.fi, and Apeworx. It works like this:
Operators (such as dYdX) batch user transactions off-chain and send them to StarkEx services.
The StarkEx service verifies the transactions in the batch and updates the relevant balances.
The StrakEx service generates a STARK proof, proving the validity of the transactions in the batch, and sends the proof to the chain.
On-chain validator smart contracts receive STARK proofs, and once the proofs are verified, a commitment to the new balance state is stored on-chain.
dYdX
dYdX is the largest decentralized derivatives exchange. It adopts the order book trading method and can leverage the perpetual contracts of more than 30 mainstream tokens. Now dYdX has also launched a free transaction activity. The transaction volume of less than 100,000 US dollars per month is free of charge, and the transaction volume of more than 100,000 US dollars will still incur fees.
According to the official website of dYdX, the trading volume in the past 24 hours is about 347 million US dollars, the number of transaction orders is 92855, and the open interest is 230 million US dollars.
Sorare
Sorare is an NFT sports game developer and has currently developed NFT-based football, basketball, and baseball games. Users can collect NFT cards, build football, basketball and baseball lineups, and play against each other.
Sorare's NFT is officially licensed, including players from 247 football clubs, Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Basketball League (NBA).
The user's card can be traded and is scarce. The score of the battle is based on the real performance of the players in the lineup. You can gain experience by participating in the battle, and you can get rewards for ranking high.
Immutable
Immutable X is an expansion solution for NFT on Ethereum, which allows users to mint NFT without Gas, and subsidizes the cost of consumption by charging fees for value flow transactions (NFT primary and secondary transactions). Transactions without value flow such as minting and transferring money remain free.
According to the official website, 50.39 million NFTs were minted on Immutable this year, and 8.63 million NFT transactions were completed, saving energy equivalent to 3.096 billion kWh.
rhino.fi
Formerly known as DeversiFi, it is a DEX built on Layer 2. The official website shows that rhino.fi has four products: trading, that is, spot trading, investment, looking for income opportunities on multiple chains, cross-chain trading, which can trade assets on multiple chains, airdrop as a service, and helping project parties in rhino. Airdrops are issued on fi.
Now, users can make deposits through Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, BNB chains, so assets on multiple chains can be traded.
ApeWorX
ApeWorx is an Ethereum development framework for Python developers, data scientists, and security personnel, designed to make it easier to develop and explore smart contract systems.
It has developed a series of modular plug-in systems, including accounts, compilers, ecosystems, infrastructure providers, blockchain browsers, and extended type conversions.
ApeWorX created the ape-StarkNet and ape-cairo plugins as a solution for Python developers to develop multi-chain applications with the StarkNet Layer 2 network.
Celer
Celer is a cross-chain interoperability protocol, developers can use the Celer cross-chain messaging SDK to build cross-chain native dApps. According to the official website, Celer’s products include three items: State Guardian Network, Layer2.finance, and Cbridge.
Celer and StarkWare collaborated to build a ZK Rollup version of the layer2.finance platform product using StarkWare's StarkEx service and the Cairo programming language. Layer2.finance is a secondary expansion of the existing Layer 1 DeFi ecosystem, which aggregates the fund distribution transactions of N users on the second layer into a single layer 1 transaction in a trustless manner.
CANVAS
CANVAS Connect is a Layer 2 expansion solution that uses StarkWare's ZK Rollup to package transactions in batches to form a single proof, thereby saving the cost of multiple transactions.
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StarkNet
StarkNet is now running as an Alpha mainnet. According to the official website, there are more than 100 projects in the ecosystem, including cross-chain bridges, DeFi, DAO, GameFi, NFT, payments, tool wallets, etc.
As of October 24, Crunchbase shows that StarkWare has invested in 10 projects, namely DeversiFi, dYdX, XMTP, Snapshot Labs, Figment, zkLend, Parallel Finance, Argent, ZKX, and MatchboxDAO. The following will introduce the StarkNet ecological projects zkLend, Snapshot X, Argent, ZKX, MatchboxDAO in the official investment.
zkLend
zkLend is a money market protocol built on StarkNet. It combines the security of Ethereum and the scalability of ZK Rollup. Users can deposit on it to earn interest, and can also mortgage other assets.
zkLend has launched two products, one is Artemis for DeFi users, anyone can borrow and lend on Artemis. The other is Apollo for institutional users, which acts as a gateway for institutional users to enter DeFi, allowing licensed participants to borrow and lend without compromising StarkNet compliance and security.
Snapshot X
Snapshot X is a voting framework built on StarkNet that allows DAOs to vote governance on Layer 2 and execute transactions on Ethereum.
Users get security similar to Layer 1, but officials estimate that the cost of voting on Snapshot X is about 50 to 100 times cheaper than Ethereum.
Argent
Argent X is the first wallet on StarkNet that supports Google and Firefox browser plugins. Next, Argent’s plans include: channels for fiat currency deposits, help users review before confirming transactions, uninterrupted connections during games, etc.
ZKX
The derivatives protocol built on StarkNet adopts the order book transaction mode. ZKX has a built-in reward mechanism, liquidity supply, and complex trading strategies.
MatchboxDAO
summary
summary
Among the two products of StarkWare, StarkEx has been on the line for more than two years, and it has also launched a well-known application such as dYdX. But now that StarkNet is online, the development center may turn to the composable StarkNet.
StarkWare has also officially invested in a number of projects in the ecosystem. With an official background, security, valuation, and future development are all more secure.
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