Starknet, an Ethereum scaling protocol, is set to enhance its layer-2 rollup network in 2024 by introducing parallel transaction functionality. This update is expected to result in increased throughput and reduced fees on the network.
Following the successful implementation of Ethereum’s Dencun hard fork, Starknet released an updated roadmap on March 20. The upgrade introduced several Ethereum Improvement Proposals, with EIP-4844 being the most significant.
EIP-4844 revolutionized the way rollups add cheaper data to blocks by replacing call data with blob space for storage. Storing cryptographic proofs of off-chain bundled transactions using call data has historically been costly because all Ethereum nodes are required to process the data indefinitely.
Starknet and other major Ethereum rollups quickly adopted the blob function after the implementation of Dencun. The network was one of the first to enable this feature on the same day as the hard fork, and users experienced a significant drop in fees shortly after.
Thanks to the compatibility with EIP-4844, transactions on Starknet’s protocol now average $0.017 in fees per transaction. The team had previously reduced fees by approximately 25% with the release of Starknet v0.13.0 in early 2024, which included an expansion of the block size.
In the second quarter of 2024, Starknet plans to release its next version update, which will introduce transaction parallelization. This enhancement will enable the network to process multiple independent transactions concurrently, leading to improved throughput and faster finality.
Furthermore, Starknet aims to further reduce fees with version 0.14.0, expected to be launched by the end of 2024. The success of EIP-4844 and performance improvements of the protocol will determine the impact of this update. The end-of-year update will include three data availability-focused upgrades, including Volition, which allows decentralized applications to store data on Starknet instead of Ethereum’s base layer.
Additionally, application recursion will enable developers to batch proofs of data storage from multiple Starknet blocks onto Ethereum, resulting in reduced costs and fee reductions for end-users. Starknet is also developing data availability compression to minimize its data footprint on Ethereum, exploring different recursion methods to achieve this functionality.