I couldn't attend StarknetCC, so instead I binge-watched all the talks.

The one that got me excited the most is Shahar Papini introducing the vision for Cairo 1.0. The highlights are summarized in these two slides:

Yeah, Cairo 1.0 is going to be infinitely more pleasant to use than Cairo 0.x and it's going to be out sooner than you can verify a STARK proof by hand. Listen to the whole talk to get all the details.

Besides the improvements to the language, there are a couple of meta points that stand out:

Cairo sucks and they know it

As anyone who has ever built a tool only for internal use only can attest to, you build it to a point where it sucks just a little less than the process it is replacing. Then, in a weird embodiment of the Stockholm syndrome, you continue to use that imperfect tool. If you have some spare time, you improve it slightly, bit by bit. That's Cairo right now.

It was built for internal use only. It sucks. But it escaped the StarkWare labs and suddenly thousands of developers are getting used to the suck and/or complaining about it.

The good news is the Cairo teams listens. They know Cairo sucks. They do care about the rest of us Caironauts and our experience of using Cairo and they’re on a mission to fix it.

Decentralization, full and honest

Cairo is, of course, closely tied to StarkNet. A common and correct critique of StarkNet is that it's centralized. However, decentralizing StarkNet was always on the roadmap. It just takes time.

Cairo 1.0 will be a big step on the decentralization journey. It will be developed in the open for the whole community to see and participate. The details of this are still TBD, but I trust the StarkWare team will share more news on this front soon.

Sense of humor

It's the little things that I relish about the StarkNet community. Tools we use change, but the spirit remains.

Build cool stuff.

Have a laugh.