StarkNet

StarkNet is a public, decentralized Layer 2 network built on Ethereum using Zero-Knowledge Rollup (ZK-Rollup) technology. It was developed by StarkWare Industries, an Israeli company founded in 2018 by Eli Ben-Sasson, Uri Kolodny, Michael Riabzev, and Alessandro Chiesa. StarkNet is the permissionless public network, while the Starknet Foundation is the non-profit entity that governs the protocol.

StarkNet enables high-throughput, lower-cost execution of smart contracts compared to Ethereum mainnet, secured by STARK proofs (Scalable Transparent ARguments of Knowledge). The network is programmed using Cairo, a purpose-built programming language developed by StarkWare for writing provable programs. The primary users are Web3 developers and DeFi protocols building decentralized applications.

The primary product is the StarkNet network itself — a public, decentralized Layer 2. StarkWare also developed StarkEx, a separate SaaS-style validity rollup service for specific platforms such as dYdX and Immutable X. The Cairo language serves as the core developer infrastructure across both products.

Direct competitors in the ZK-Rollup space include zkSync (developed by Matter Labs) and Polygon zkEVM. In the Optimistic Rollup category, Arbitrum and Optimism are the dominant alternatives. StarkNet's primary technical differentiator is its use of STARK proofs rather than SNARKs, which removes the need for a trusted setup.

StarkWare, the company that built StarkNet, is headquartered in Netanya. Co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson is an Israeli professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and foundational STARK research was conducted in Israel. The core technical team is primarily Israel-based.