Overview

Several questions about the whole buzz in the blockchain space are still confusing to many and quite a lot still doesn’t make sense. Take, for example, in the blockchain economy, one core attribute of its trueness includes detailed accounting and secured transacting.

But like the shadows of the blockchain’s expectation, it’s either there are issues with withdrawals, deposits, and of course, hacks still happen in the space– explaining lags and drawbacks surrounding this state-of-the-art technology.

Sure, we are talking about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, Solana, and several other blockchains. All these are blockchains, and as they are defined, they are expected to help in processing and executing transactions (which include but are not limited to withdrawals, deposits, buy & sells, staking, locking, yield farming, DeFi, etc.) on-chain.

These standing problems for which diverse blockchains evolved after bitcoin to solve– from transaction speed to scalability, to security, and throughputs, are getting more and more feasible and unsolved by the day. These problems make the whole trading and utility around cryptocurrencies a façade and unlike what they were built or developed for, in spite of nice looking whitepapers. Can there be any help? Yes! Huh…wait a minute.

The Trilemma: Onboarding Starknet

Here. Starting from the problem again. Often times when certain blockchain protocols launch, three or more core principles form the vision for their solutions: scalability, security, decentralization, and others such as (upgradeability, reliability, and cost-efficiency).

And the standing reality remains that in practicability, using conventional means, these blockchains end up achieving one of these three, or at most two. This concern is described as the scalability trilemma. It explains the impracticable approach blockchain projects have chosen to confront and solve the problems inherent in the blockchain world.

For instance, some could attempt to solve decentralization and security, leaving scalability out of the game, while others take on scalability but decentralization becomes marred. This spot exactly is where StarkNet comes in—as the solution!

StarkNet is a permissionless and decentralized zero-knowledge rollup that operates to help scale transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. By zero knowledge it means, transaction inputs (e.g withdrawals, deposits, etc.) used by the off-chain prover (Starks) are not revealed to the blockchain. This ultimately secures the user’s privacy.

Zk-rollup

Zk-rollup is a layer 2 (L2) protocol that executes thousands of transactions outside the Ethereum mainchain (i.e layer 1). It archives this by making all off-chain transactions into one transaction and with that singular transaction re-enters the Ether’s mainchain with a snark plus proof of transaction (which lives on the chain).

In StarkNet, an example of Zk-rollup snark is zkStarks

The zkStarks was developed by StarkWare. It confirms the validity of every transaction- acting as a proof or an algebraic representation of every computation that helps L1 Ethereum blockchain to validate every transaction, as a true one.

The word ‘starks’ stands for:

• S: Scalable

• T: Transparent

• Ark: Argument of Knowledge

A little Story :)

Just think of Starknet and the whole Zk-roll ups as Mcdonald's restaurant and its hamburger with several recipes, including– onions, hotdog, ketchup, mustard, and others. Nobody will want to pay for hotdogs, onions, ketchup, and other recipes individually/separately, right?

In other words, Mcdonald's made you a nice sandwich hamburger, leaving you with just one receipt affirming your payment to any who cares or asks for it. In the same light, StarkNet is literally like McDonald's (with its off-chain prover provider) providing the loop/interface that helps to mesh thousands of transactions into one stark (like a paid burger in place of several recipes payments with only one transaction receipt/proof).

This snark tells the Ethereum layer 1 chain that, “hey yo, all transactions here are correct” and just like no security will care to ask if you’ve paid for the hotdog in your hamburger– since its natural, so also, every transaction would only be verified by Zk-Stark’s off-chain prover, making Ethereum Layer 1 to only interact with the receipt or proof of transaction submitted from the snark.

This makes Ethereum L1 evade the need of verifying every transaction one-after-the-other, thus making a faster transaction time, cut-down in gas price, and a secured escape for network congestion.

Conclusion

Conclusively, the provision of Zk-roll up remains the standing honest solution to the scalability of the Ethereum’s layer 1 network. Congestion on the Ethereum network was largely reduced though its #TheMerge– accounting for a massive reduction in its global energy consumption.

In spite of Ethereum’s merge to its POS consensus, the network is not scaling optimally as gas prices still fluctuates- to this end was StarkNet formed.

StarkNet stacks users’ transactions off-chain, delivering its zkSnarks (the proof) into the blockchain for verification and final execution thereby updating every single wallet included in the transaction- thus securely scaling transactions in a seamless and decentralized manner on the blockchain.

Thanks for reading :)
Watch out for these upcoming articles, subscribe, and collect the content.

• Starkware and Its products,

• Transactions & StarkNet: Destiny of Executions,

• StarkNet for Devs,

• StarkNet for Community,

• StarkNet for Businesses,

• StarkNet for Crypto Projects, and

• StarkNet’s Playground.