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Eli Ben-Sasson

StarkWare launches $1M research fund for ZK Bitcoin scaling

StarkWare’s fund seeks to promote research into OP_CAT and demonstrate its potential to unlock and benefit Bitcoin and the blockchain community in general.

StarkWare has announced ambitious plans to bring mass use to Bitcoin using zero-knowledge (ZK) technology backed by a $1 million research fund.

The initiative seeks to scale Bitcoin and Ethereum simultaneously using ZK technology — specifically, Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge (STARK) cryptography.

StarkWare’s announcement aims to further Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision by enabling everyday micropayments and creating a scalable solution to support global Bitcoin (BTC) transactions.

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Matter Labs drops ZK trademark applications after industry backlash

It follows a public letter from ZK researchers and top industry experts slamming the firm for “oppressive behavior.”

Matter Labs, the team behind Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution zkSync, has dropped all attempts to obtain intellectual property rights to trademark the term “ZK” — short for “zero knowledge” proofs.

Its decision came three days after several leading ZK researchers condemned the firm’s behavior “in the strongest possible terms,” iterating that ZK technologies should instead remain a “public good” that is “accessible to all.”

“As a result of these conversations, we decided to drop all trademark applications,” Matter Labs confirmed in a June 2 X post.

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Kremlin Warns: Global Concerns Grow Over Dollar’s Political Use

Are ZK-proofs the answer to Bitcoin’s Ordinal and BRC-20 problem?

Zero-knowledge proofs could be a viable means to address recent network congestion and high fees on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Bitcoin (BTC) network has faced a litmus test in recent weeks due to the increased demands of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens being inscribed onto the preeminent blockchain. 

The resulting increase in fees and transaction congestion has left the wider Bitcoin community frustrated, considering that some BRC-20 tokens involve meme tokens that have attracted billions of dollars in capital in recent weeks.

The Ethereum ecosystem has benefitted from the development of scaling solutions that have brought massive improvements in network capacity and processing ability. Zero-knowledge proofs (zk-proofs) in particular have grabbed headlines over the past few months, with a number of projects adopting the scaling technology.

Cointelegraph spoke exclusively to Eli Ben-Sasson, the co-founder of Ethereum-focused StarkWare and the pioneer of zk-STARKs (zero-knowledge Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge), to explore whether the technology could be the answer to Bitcoin’s latest challenge.

Zk-proofs are cryptographic protocols that allow a party to prove a statement or data is true without revealing any information. The technology assures privacy and security while adding capacity to blockchains in particular, by reducing the computational load needed to verify transactions and other data and information stored on chain.

Related: zk-STARKs vs. zk-SNARKs explained

The renowned mathematician and cryptographer credits Bitcoin for starting his journey of exploration around the promise of validity, cryptographic and zero-knowledge proofs to improve blockchain technology. Highlighting the "deeply entwined" nature of the scaling solutions and blockchains, Ben-Sasson summed up the potential for zk-proofs to benefit the Bitcoin network:

“Validity proofs and STARKs allow you in a very efficient way to use the integrity of math to extend the orbit of integrity that a blockchain covers to invite anyone to participate and add more capacity to the network.”

Bitcoin’s blockchain will continue to act as an inner circle of integrity, while zk-proofs extend the origin of integrity and bring in more capacity, creating what Ben-Sasson described as a "positive flywheel" effect:

“The more capacity you bring, the more social functions can be used, even if it's money, you can do micro payments, or you can add new things if you allow smart contracts. And then there's more trust in the system and it adds more value.”

Ben-Sasson reiterated his belief that the Bitcoin network could see greater integrity and efficiency from the mathematical benefits afforded by validity proofs. He added that the likes of Bitcoin developers Greg Maxwell, Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn had been early proponents of STARK transparent proofs of validity and privacy, which do not require trusted setup and remain quantum secure.

Related: Ordinals and BRC-20 will disappear in a matter of months, says JAN3 CEO

The potential for Bitcoin, which first and foremost acts as decentralized hard money, to allow more general forms of computation and social functions remains a discussion point for its community. For Ben-Sasson, the potential of incorporating zk-proofs is clearly being driven by the demand in the market for extra functionality on top of Bitcoin that is being powered by BRC-20 tokens:

“For it (BRC-20) to really have the level of integrity that is offered by Bitcoin, there must be a hard fork that allows these things to be verified and validated and have the integrity of Bitcoin. And that's a huge decision and a huge debate point.”

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, ZeroSync Association is a newly formed startup that is developing zk-proof powered tools allowing users to validate the state of the Bitcoin network without having to download the blockchain or trust a third party for verification.

ZeroSync’s validity proof allows users to verify Bitcoin’s chain state instantly, removing the need to download over 500GB of blockchain data currently required to sync a Bitcoin node.

ZeroSync co-founder Robin Linus told Cointelegraph that its chain state proof does not solve network congestion directly, but would remove the need for users to download inscriptions that have been clogging up the Bitcoin blockchain.

However zk-proofs still hold promise in helping remedy current network congestion. Linus said ZeroSync has also developed a Bitcoin client-side validation protocol dubbed zkCoins, which allows processing up to 100 token transactions per second:

“It uses inscriptions, but the on-chain footprint is much lower than BRC-20, and it does not bloat the UTXO set.”

Linus added that a SNARK (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) verifier on Bitcoin’s main layer could enable an entire spectrum of scaling solutions including zk-rollups, trustless bridges to sidechains as well as the potential to peg BTC onto zkCoins to enhance privacy and increase throughput:

“It's fantastic to see that validity proofs are gaining more traction in the Bitcoin community now. People have already started discussing a new opcode on the bitcoin-dev mailing list.”

Linus also noted that other Bitcoin layer-2 scaling solutions such as the Lightning Network, Fedimint and Chashu, which are privacy-preserving custodians based on Chaumian eCash, have seen increased interest following network congestion driven by Ordinals and BRC-20 minting. 

Magazine: ZK-rollups are ‘the endgame’ for scaling blockchains: Polygon Miden founder

Kremlin Warns: Global Concerns Grow Over Dollar’s Political Use

Starkware Plans to Open Source Key Tech Linked to Starknet Prover

Starkware Plans to Open Source Key Tech Linked to Starknet ProverAt the Starkware Sessions 2023 event, held at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv, Israel, Starkware co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson informed the audience that the company intends to open source “key tech” linked to the Starknet Prover. During the event, the co-founder of the Ethereum scaling project stated that this marks a “significant step for scaling […]

Kremlin Warns: Global Concerns Grow Over Dollar’s Political Use

Breaking: Historic day for crypto as Ethereum Merge to proof-of-stake occurs

The Ethereum proof-of-stake consensus mechanism will cut energy consumption by a massive 99.95% compared to the proof-of-work system.

The Ethereum Merge has officially taken place, marking the full transition of the network to proof-of-stake (PoS)

On Sept. 15 at 06:42:42 UTC at block 15537393, the long-awaited Merge saw the merging of the Ethereum mainnet execution layer and the Beacon Chain’s consensus layer at the Terminal Total Difficulty of 58750000000000000000000, meaning the network will no longer rely on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism.

Ethereum (ETH) price gets a slight pump following the Merge in hourly metrics, currently trading at around $1,635, according to data from TradingView.

The Ethereum Foundation said the Merge will make the Ethereum network about 99.95% more energy efficient and will set the stage for future scaling solutions, including sharding.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin celebrated the Merge with a tweet moments after the historical transition happened:

Speaking to Cointelegraph, StarkWare president and co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson that “the immediate importance of the Merge is the dramatic effect on energy consumption.”

Ben-Sasson said it also marks “the first step in a process that will lead to exceedingly widespread adoption of Ethereum,” stating:

“It starts a chain reaction of changes. The end result will be the very broad use of Ethereum’s computing power, and the general population using blockchain-based apps in many different areas of life.”

The Merge has come on the back of several years of hard work from the Ethereum Foundation.

Businesses that issue Ethereum-based exchange-traded products (ETPs) have been busy making their own adjustments about the Merge. Bradley Duke, CEO of the European crypto ETP issuer ETC Group, explained to Cointelegraph that the company has prepared a “forked version” of their ETH-based ETP in case there’s significant support for a PoW fork after the Merge.

“If enough people get behind a fork for whatever reason, we feel the free market will decide on what should live and what should not,” Duke added.

Related: It’s on! Where to catch the Ethereum Merge live

With the Merge complete, the “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge” and “Splurge” are the final stages left on the Ethereum technical roadmap.

The Surge will increase scalability for rollups through sharding, the Verge will achieve statelessness through Verkle trees, the Purge will eliminate historical data and technical debt, and the Splurge will involve a number of small miscellaneous upgrades.

One of the biggest transitions in the history of blockchain didn't go without opposition. ETHW Core, a group representing proof-of-work miners, announced that they will to conduct a hard fork within 24 hours after the Merge

Renowned designer Beeple celebrated the Merge with a sci-fi illustration:

The Ethereum Merge has officially taken place at block 15537393 on Thursday at 06:42:42 UTC, transitioning the network from PoW to PoS.

Kremlin Warns: Global Concerns Grow Over Dollar’s Political Use

60 million NFTs could be minted in a single transaction: StarkWare founder

The StarkWare founder announced the launch of its new Recursive validity proof technology on Aug. 7 in Seoul.

Zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup tech company StarkWare founder Eli Ben-Sasson says its new Recursive validity proofs could theoretically roll up as many as 60 million transactions into one on the Ethereum blockchain.

The zkSTARK co-inventor made the comments to Cointelegraph during ETH Seoul on Aug. 7 after announcing the start of production of StarkWare’s new Recursive validity proof technology during a presentation. 

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Ben-Sasson said that recursive validity proofs could further scale up transaction throughput to a factor of at least ten compared to standard Validium scaling, noting that they’ve already been rolling up 600,000 mints of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on the ImmutableX protocol.

“I would say the minimum I would say is 10x [...] We've been putting 600,000 mints of NFTs, which resulted in a 10 gas per mint. We can now at the very least take 10 of such proofs and generate a recursive proof of all 10 of these things,” he explained.

“We could go to six million at the very least, and this is in the near term. That's something that would be very easy to do. ”

However, Ben-Sasson also added the number could “go up to 60 million with more engineering and tweaking," adding: 

“I think also reducing the latency by another factor that's 5 to 10x is also very doable.”

StarkNet is a permissionless and decentralized layer-2 ZK-rollup that uses Validium to scale transactions. Like standard ZK-Rollups, Validiums work by aggregating thousands of transactions into a single transaction. StarkNet’s new Recursive validity proof technology can batch up several Validium blocks into a single proof.

This scaling solution could be a game-changer for Ethereum as layer-2 scaling solutions like ZK-Rollups and StarkNet’s Recursive validity proofs can offload much of the network congestion and data availability issues that have caused trouble on the Ethereum Mainnet. Currently, Ethereum’s Mainnet can process transactions at a rate of 12-15 transactions per second (TPS).

During his presentation at ETH Seoul, Ben-Sasson noted that recursion is great for scaling as it lowers gas costs, has higher proof capacity, and offers lower latency. 

StarkNet has been live on Ethereum Mainnet since June 2020. It currently powers protocols including dYdX, Immutable, DeversiFi, and Celer.

Related: Blockchain’s Scaling Problem, Explained

Also speaking at ETH Seoul on Sunday, Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his enthusiasm towards ZK-rollups, further stating that the scaling solution was superior to Optimistic Rollups:

“In the longer term, ZK-Rollups are eventually going to beat Optimistic Rollups because they have these fundamental advantages, like not needing to have a seven-day withdrawal period.”

To date, the Ethereum-based scaling solutions with the most total value locked (TVL) are Arbitrum, Optimism, dYdX, and Loopring.

Kremlin Warns: Global Concerns Grow Over Dollar’s Political Use

‘100x Lower Than L1 Fees’ — Alchemy Integrates Ethereum L2 Product Starknet to Increase Web3 Scalability

‘100x Lower Than L1 Fees’ — Alchemy Integrates Ethereum L2 Product Starknet to Increase Web3 ScalabilityAccording to the startup Starkware, the team’s Ethereum layer two (L2) service Starknet has been integrated by the blockchain API and node service Alchemy. Developers can now leverage Alchemy’s infrastructure tools alongside Starknet’s zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup technology. Israel-Based Startup Starkware Partners With Alchemy On Monday, the blockchain startup Starkware announced the team has inked a […]

Kremlin Warns: Global Concerns Grow Over Dollar’s Political Use