StarkWare, a leading technology company, has made an exciting announcement regarding the launch of Stwo, a groundbreaking prover that utilizes zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. The primary objective of Stwo is to enhance proving latency and reduce transaction fees for end users.
To compress transactions on Starknet and generate cryptographic proofs, a prover is required. With Stwo’s ability to generate faster proofs, StarkWare will be able to lower their processing costs, resulting in reduced user fees. Oren Katz, the COO of StarkWare, emphasized that Stwo will bring new possibilities to the protocol. He stated that the prover and its open-source codebase will be accessible to everyone, including developers interested in implementing Stark-based systems. In the long run, both Starknet and Starknet app chains will automatically benefit from Stwo, leading to decreased latency, processing costs, and user fees.
Katz highlighted the significance of the prover in STARK technology, referring to it as the “magic wand” that plays a crucial role in scaling Ethereum. The implementation of Circle STARK in Stwo is expected to greatly enhance Ethereum scaling by improving the efficiency of proof generation.
Zero-knowledge proofs, also known as ZK-proofs, are cryptographic protocols that enable users to prove specific information to others without revealing the information itself. StarkWare’s Starknet ZK-rollup currently ranks as the fourth-largest layer 2 solution, with a total value locked (TVL) of $1.33 billion, according to L2Beat data. Starknet holds the top position among ZK rollups in terms of TVL, followed by zkSync Era with a TVL of $868 million.
StarkWare has expressed its commitment to fully open-source the Starknet stack, aligning with their vision of creating a decentralized and permissionless layer-2 blockchain network.
The demand for privacy-preserving technologies based on ZK-proofs has been on the rise. Humanity Protocol, backed by Animoca, recently introduced a ZKP-powered biometric palm recognition technology for Web3 identity verification. This innovative method serves as a less intrusive alternative to iris scans for biometric verification purposes. Humanity Protocol received funding from more than 20 venture capitalist firms, including esteemed companies like Hashed, CMCC, Cypher Capital, Foresight Ventures, and Mechanism Capital, further highlighting the growing interest in ZK-proof-based solutions.
In related news, the US government recently transferred $922 million worth of seized Bitcoin after the cryptocurrency’s price surpassed $60,000.