Dialogue with StarkWare Co-founder: Layer3 Scaling and Cairo Advantages Will Make StarkNet Stronger

Compilation & Organization: Babywhale, Foresight News

Interview: Rose, Kernel Ventures

From February 5 to 6, StarkWare held the two-day StarkWare Sessions 2023 event in Tel Aviv, Israel. At the event, members of the StarkWare official team, Ethereum Foundation researchers, and community project team members focused on hot topics such as StarkNet governance and decentralization progress, StarkNet DeFi, account abstraction, Layer 3, EIP-4844 and sharding, AppChain, zkEVM, etc. Through speeches, panel discussions, and demonstrations, they explored the development status, construction methods, and potential of various hot topics and tracks in Ethereum and StarkWare.

Foresight News attended the top event of the StarkWare ecosystem and posed some questions that everyone is concerned about to the core developers. We interviewed StarkWare co-founder and president Eli Ben-Sasson, StarkWare ecosystem head Louis Guthmann, StarkWare exploration head Abdelhamid Bakhta, Kakarot co-founder Elias Tazartes, Kakarot technical head Clément Walter, and Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist. In this article, we focus on the interview with StarkWare co-founder and president Eli Ben-Sasson, where we can learn about StarkNet's competitive advantages, degree of decentralization, future vision, and wallet optimization details.

Foresight News: What is the future vision for StarkNet? Do you hope it will grow into an independent ecosystem, or be part of an EVM-compatible ecosystem focused on cross-chain interoperability?

Eli Ben-Sasson: It will definitely start based on the Ethereum ecosystem, but because StarkNet offers strong scalability, I believe it will develop into something independent, but its purpose is still to scale Ethereum.

Foresight News: Layer 2 networks are thriving right now; what are the characteristics of StarkNet?

Eli Ben-Sasson: There are many characteristics. It has the best smart contract programming language, the best scalability, and the ability to further scale through Fractal Scaling and Layer 3 invented by StarkWare. This was also proposed first by StarkWare among many Rollups, so it may bring certain network effects.

Foresight News: What competitive advantages do you think StarkNet has to support the development of Layer 3? What is the difference between developing on StarkNet and other L2s?

Eli Ben-Sasson: The difference with StarkWare is that it has its own language rather than using Solidity. Many other L2s are compatible with Solidity. StarkWare's programming language is Cairo. This is a newer language, which means it is more innovative in many ways. Additionally, StarkNet already has account abstraction capabilities, and institutions like Visa are currently using it, providing end users with a better UI and higher security. This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the advantages of the Cairo language, and that is our competitive advantage.

Foresight News: As a new language, Cairo introduces new possibilities for cryptocurrency. Do you want to attract new developers to join Web3, and what are the plans?

Eli Ben-Sasson: Yes, we are attracting new developers to join Web3. We are attracting developers interested in the scalability that only StarkNet can provide, as well as those who are still in the Web2 space but see the potential of this new ecosystem. StarkWare is attracting developers from various fields, and there are many important organizations in the ecosystem, such as Only Dust and Node Guardians, that are working hard to expand the developer base.

Foresight News: Is mass adoption one of StarkNet's goals? How can this be achieved?

Eli Ben-Sasson: Mass adoption is certainly one of StarkNet's goals. Blockchain is a technology that can be used for social use cases. It needs to achieve the scalability required for social networks and social applications. The way we try to achieve this is not through publicity, but by providing very practical development tools, and then developers will take StarkWare to the world.

Foresight News: What is the current degree of decentralization of StarkNet, especially regarding sequencers, and how will decentralization be maintained as the network grows and scales?

Eli Ben-Sasson: That's a great question. If we measure the number of core developers of the protocol and tools, we can say that the network is already quite decentralized in some aspects, and there are many other teams building important parts of the infrastructure. Regarding the improvement of sequencers, we have announced the open-source of validators and sequencers. We are currently in the research process of finding a protocol that will improve and decentralize the sequencer. Once we determine the protocol to be used, we will implement it and decentralize the sequencer.

Foresight News: The optimization of the wallet experience in StarkNet has received much attention; in what areas will the wallet be improved?

Eli Ben-Sasson: Through account abstraction, there is already a better user experience and high security. Apart from trusting some very standard security measures in smartphones, everything else will be achieved through account abstraction. Wallets like Cartridge, Argent, and Braavos are currently leading. End users can use wallets in a more secure way, which is actually better than the previous blockchain experience.

Foresight News: StarkWare has launched the token (StarkNet), but distribution has not yet begun; what are the plans in this regard?

Eli Ben-Sasson: Token-related matters are in progress, but apart from what is mentioned in the blog post, there are no other details to share.