Starknet 2024: From closing the gap to dominating the L2 landscape in 2025
Closing the gap, positioning as the best Validity Rollup in the market, and setting the stage for dominance in 2025 with a bold vision and an ecosystem more active than ever
Starknet’s journey through 2024 is a testament to the resilience of its ecosystem. Despite waves of doubt and external challenges, the community never wavered in its commitment to building and innovating. The result? Starknet’s fundamentals have reached an all-time high, marked by unparalleled progress and a solidified position as one of the leaders in the L2 landscape.
This article explores the transformative year that was 2024 for Starknet. From groundbreaking performance optimizations to unmatched UX advancements, strategic partnerships, and ambitious plans for the future, the year was nothing short of monumental. With an ecosystem more active and complete than ever, this article will show you why Starknet is poised for a major comeback in 2025.
In a way, 2024 was the necessary year of preparation for the steady growth and explosion of Starknet that will begin in 2025.
As an article designed to explain and recap everything that has happened in such a vast ecosystem over an entire year, it’s naturally quite long. I’ve made sure to condense it as much as possible without losing relevance, focusing on the key highlights and alphas, and illustrating them with graphs and visuals. However, if it’s still too lengthy for you, feel free to skip directly to the sections that interest you the most:
1️⃣ Starknet Stack optimization
2️⃣ Starknet UX
3️⃣ Partnerships
4️⃣ Bitcoin
5️⃣ STRK token, governance, grant programs, and staking
6️⃣ Ecosystem evolutions
7️⃣ Projects shipping
8️⃣ 2025 for Starknet
1️⃣ Starknet Stack Optimization
Starknet’s performance improvements have been nothing short of extraordinary this year. It has evolved from being one of the least performant stacks in the market to becoming one of the best—and arguably the top Validity Rollup stack.
From January 2024 to now:
TPS capacity: Increased from 70 to over 500 —≥ 7x improvement
Gas fees: Reduced from $0.24 for an ERC-20 transfer to less than $0.001 —≥ over 100 improvement
Transaction speed: Reduced from 15 seconds to 2 seconds —≥ 7x improvement
During the Flippy Flop campaign, Starknet achieved on Mainnet:
Peak TPS of 857
Sustained TPS of 127.50 over an entire day
Total transactions of 9,726,562 at a cost of only $27,385 🤯, meaning an average of $0.0028 per transaction.
With its current capabilities, Starknet is one of the fastest L2 on the market, capable of handling all of Ethereum's activity (L1 + L2) at peak levels (~460 TPS) while remaining extremely cost-efficient.
These achievements, as impressive as they are, merely represent the beginning. Many more optimizations are planned for 2025 to further enhance Starknet's speed, gas fees, and capacity. More details are provided in the section 8.
How did we get here?
First, it’s essential to understand that Starknet, being a non-EVM-compatible L2, had to rebuild its stack entirely from scratch. This required significantly more time, effort, and resources compared to its competitors. However, now that the gap has been closed, the technological lead between Starknet and its competitors will only widen.
The progress Starknet made in 2024 was achieved through the following key optimizations:
Ethereum Blob Integration: Starknet integrated Ethereum blobs from the start, reducing gas fees by an astounding x100.
Bolt Upgrade (v0.13.2): This introduced Parallel Execution and Block Packing, raising TPS capacity to 500, reducing transaction speed to ~2 seconds, and setting block times at 30 seconds.
Blob Gas Reduction (v0.13.3): Starknet tackled the rising demand for Ethereum’s blobs with a solution that made blob gas on Starknet 5x cheaper, earning praise from Vitalik Buterin himself.
In just a few months of optimization, Starknet has closed the performance gap, firmly positioning itself as one of the leading L2 in the space. And yet, this is only the beginning when it comes to performance for Starknet.
2️⃣ Starknet UX
When it comes to user experience (UX), Starknet stands out by enabling dApps to deliver a Web2-like UX while maintaining the power of Web3. This is particularly evident in the gaming sector, where Dojo and Cartridge have perfectly leveraged Starknet’s native Account Abstraction to create seamless experiences for players.
In simple terms, all dApps on Starknet can now eliminate traditional pain points for users, such as:
Managing a crypto wallet and seed phrase, thanks to Passkeys (and soon zkLogin).
Bridging to Starknet or paying gas fees, thanks to Paymaster and Starknet's extremely low-cost transactions.
Signing transactions repeatedly, thanks to Session Keys.
As such, Starknet represents the ultimate UX for Web3, combining its advantages with the simplicity and ease of Web2.
Moreover, Starknet’s Multicall feature allows users to perform all their DeFi operations in a single transaction and much more.
Additionally, you can interact with your favorite Starknet dApps directly from X.
For developers, Cairo has evolved significantly, going from v2.4.0 to v2.9.0. If you haven’t explored Cairo yet, it’s time to take the pill: here’s how.
3️⃣ Partnerships
Leveraging these impressive optimizations and UX improvements, the Starknet ecosystem has forged numerous new partnerships. As the saying goes, "Alone, we go faster; together, we go farther."
This has been one of Starknet’s key driving principles throughout 2024. Below is a list of major partnerships the ecosystem established this year;
New DA solutions for Starknet Appchains and (future) L3s:
New token rewards for the Starknet community:
New Data Feed providers for Starknet builders:
New Wallet Integrations on Starknet:
New interoperability protocol integrations:
Enhanced data tracking:
Decentralization initiatives:
Additional partnerships:
4️⃣ Bitcoin
Starknet’s new plan is to become an execution layer for both Ethereum and… Bitcoin 🤯
Yes, both at the same time, functioning as a L2 for Bitcoin and Ethereum simultaneously. This positions Starknet once again as a pioneering layer, introducing numerous benefits for the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Starknet communities. For a detailed breakdown, I highly recommend reading this article. It explains everything you need to know, helping you fully understand the vision and the implications of this future settlement on Bitcoin for the broader ecosystem. Spoiler: the potential is massive and could disrupt the entire market.
For the lazy people, here’s an overview of the announcements made by StarkWare (Starknet’s main contributor) on this topic:
$1M OP_CAT Fund to accelerate research on OP_CAT soft fork advantages and potential risks. Here is the first grantee of this fund
The Stwo Verifier launch on OP_CAT-enabled Bitcoin Signet, making StarkWare the first company to verify a ZK proof in Bitcoin history
The first research paper by StarkWare on Stark over Bitcoin
Significant optimization in the StarkWare OP_CAT-based Circle STARK verifier, reducing multiplication costs by no less than 70%
Another optimization, this time for SHA256 script implementation, significantly improving efficiency
@weikengchen, a StarkWare partner, has implemented a new verifier in Bitcoin Script (with OP_CAT enabled)
Partnership with Scrypt (Bitcoin OGs) to build a permissionless PoC bridge between Bitcoin and L2s. The first step of this partnership is complete: Scrypto has officially shipped a smart contract on Bitcoin Signet capable of locking and unlocking funds—ELI5: a trustless bridge between an L2 and Bitcoin
And here are two Bitcoin-specific projects launched by StarkWare:
Shinigami: A Bitcoin Script VM in Cairo, enabling the generation of STARK proofs for generic Bitcoin Script computation.
Raiko: A ZK Bitcoin client implemented in Cairo, designed to enable trustless validation of the Bitcoin blockchain via STARK proof verification.
Finally, some researchers from StarkWare and the Bitcoin community have demonstrated that covenants (the primary feature introduced by OP_CAT) are already feasible on Bitcoin without requiring a soft fork.
In 2025, Starknet and StarkWare will double down on efforts to make Starknet a L2 for Bitcoin.
5️⃣ STRK token, governance, grant programs, and staking
On February 14, 2024, the Starknet Foundation decided to distribute 7% (700M tokens) of the total STRK supply to its community, reaching nearly 1.3 million wallets and distributing over $1.3 billion.
This was the second-largest airdrop of the year in terms of the amount distributed.
The token has five main utilities:
Paying transaction fees on Starknet natively (in addition to ETH).
Participating in governance and contributing to decision-making for Starknet's evolution.
Funding grant programs to accelerate the growth and expansion of the ecosystem.
Serving as a key asset for participating in Starknet DeFi.
Staking, supporting network decentralization and earning rewards for that.
For the governance part, the community has been officially consulted twice: To validate the STRK staking parameters & on the termination of Transactions V0,1,2
In term of grant programs, three type of programs have emerged:
For users: The main program is DeFi Spring, which distributes STRK tokens to liquidity providers.
Initially, 40M STRK was allocated, but the Starknet Foundation later added another 50M STRK, bringing the total to 90M STRK. In addition, the campaign has been extended until this budget is exhausted (likely by the end of Q2 2025). On this program, the STRK token is one of the few eligible farming tokens. Approximately 36M STRK tokens remain to be distributed during this campaign.
For both users and developers: The WPL Program rewards anyone contributing to Starknet’s growth, whether through content creation, tool building, or project development. So anyone, whether a developer or not, can participate and be fairly rewarded. The first phase of the program has an initial budget of 5M STRK.
For builders: The Starknet Foundation has launched several initiatives to support builders:
Finally, the STRK token can now be staked to support the future decentralization of Starknet. Notably, Starknet is the first and only L2 to have launched a permissionless staking mechanism on Mainnet.
This staking launch marks the first phase of STRK staking, designed to transition Starknet from a centralized L2 to a fully decentralized L2 powered by a PoS consensus. Here’s the roadmap for this transformation:
In three additional stages, Starknet will achieve full decentralization, with a decentralized network of sequencers and provers powered by a PoS mechanism. This will allow stakers to earn not only STRK inflation rewards but also user fees in the future. A buyback and burn mechanism, similar to Ethereum’s, is also a possibility, depending on future community decisions.
For now, the rewards in this first phase come entirely from STRK token inflation, designed to incentivize STRK holders to participate in staking and support StarkWare during this introductory learning phase. However, keep in mind the following:
This inflation directly benefits the community, as neither StarkWare, the Starknet Foundation, nor any locked tokens can participate in staking at this stage.
The inflation rate is extremely low, with a maximum annualized cap of 1.6%, though it will likely be much lower in practice. For instance, if 75% of the circulating supply is staked (a high estimate, if not impossible, given StarkWare and the Foundation cannot participate), the inflation rate would be approximately ~0.55%.
Here are the staking metrics.
Over 130 million STRK tokens have already been staked, even though the Starknet Foundation, StarkWare, and locked tokens cannot yet participate in staking. Currently, the APR is approximately 14%, though it varies depending on overall participation. You can participate in staking through three methods:
Become a Validator:
You need to run a full node and stake at least 20,000 STRK.
Become a Delegator:
Simply choose a validator to delegate your tokens to—no technical expertise is required.
Use LST Projects:
With Nimbora (audited), Endur (audited) or zkLend (not audited)
This allow you to keep your STRK liquid while earning staking APR.
Additionally, you can participate in DeFi to accumulate staking rewards plus DeFi rewards (around 20% APR with lending and more with looping strategies; but DYOR carefully all the risks of that).
Here’s an overview of the ecosystem supporting STRK staking:
6️⃣ Ecosystem evolutions
Between the end of 2023 and now, the Starknet ecosystem has seen remarkable growth in user-centric projects, increasing by 168%, from 72 projects to 193.
2023 ecosystem.
Now.
In terms of TVL, we’ve seen over 600% growth, going from $140M to ~$1B.
For DeFi dApps on Starknet, the TVL growth mirrors this trend, increasing by ~600%, from $35M to $240M.
When it comes to an ecosystem's most crucial resource, developers, the metrics are equally positive on Starknet:
The total number of active Cairo developers on GitHub reached its highest monthly count in September 2024 (see figure 1)
More developers are actively exploring Starknet (see figure 2)
74% of developers remain active on Starknet 12 months after their first contribution (see figure 3)
Participation in Basecamps (Starknet's introductory courses for developers) has quadrupled compared to last year, with graduates tripling.
Globally, Starknet ranks 4th in terms of the number of developers within the Ethereum ecosystem in 2024. Notably, it is the only non-EVM-compatible network in this ranking.
Starknet is also among the top 10 chains with the highest growth in full-time developers.
Ecosystems in the 500–2,000 developer range lost an average of 9% of their developers, whereas Starknet grew by 18%, making it the fourth-largest ecosystem in this category, behind Aptos, Stellar, and Sui.
In short: our developers are locked in and continue to grow over time.
In terms of new activities and dApps on Mainnet, we’ve seen a range of exciting additions:
Staking and Liquid Staking
Efficient Perpetual DEX with Paradex (appchain)
A ton of new gaming projects like Influence, Eternum, Force Prime Heroes, Dope Wars, Blob Arena, Jokers of Neon, zKube, Loot Survivor, Xar, new Everai gaming project, and 3 gaming projects from Stark Arcade and Boltwade Studio.
For those who believe in the DeFi renaissance, it’s happening on Starknet as well:
@EkuboProtocol: The most advanced and efficient AMM in crypto.
@avnu_fi: The Jupiter of Starknet (with a MUCH better UX)
@tradeparadex: The Hyperliquid of the Starknet ecosystem, with a based team that quickly responds to and implements community feedback.
@vesuxyz: The most innovative and user-friendly money market (+ anyone can create their own market on it).
@nostrafinance & @zkLend: The AAVE of Starknet.
@NimboraIntern: A unique application enabling farming L1 protocols directly from Starknet (DeFi pooling) + Liquid Staking.
@endurfi: The Lido of Starknet.
@strkfarm: The Yearn Finance of Starknet.
@Bountive: The Pool Together of Starknet.
@LayerAkira: The only CLOB DEX on Starknet
@CarmineOptions: The only options protocol available on Starknet
As such, on Starknet Mainnet, you can currently:
Lend and borrow on Vesu, Opus, zkLend and Nostra
LP and trade options on Carmine
Optimize your yield farming with STRKfarm
Farm L1 protocols directly from Starknet with Nimbora
Stake and receive a liquid STRK token with Endur, Nimbora and zkLend
Trade on AVNU
LP on Ekubo and Haiko
Predict with our prediction market Raize Club
Launch your shitcoin with Unruggable and Ventory pump fun
Participate in no-loss lottery on Bountive
Mint a Starknet native stablecoin with Opus
Earn incentives to enhance your life and focus with Focus Tree, and improve your health and fitness while earning rewards with StarkFit
Play: Influence, Eternum (need to wait the new season), Force Prime, Jokers of Neons, The Dope Wars, zKube, Loot Survivor, XAR, new Everai game on TG, games from Starkarcade and BoltwadeStudio and Blobarena.
Track Starknet data on Dune, DappRadar, Voyager, Starkscan, AVNU Market and @UnrugTop for memecoins
Speaking of dApps, let’s see now what our ecosystem shipped this year.
7️⃣ Projects shipping
1. StarkGate (Starknet Canonical Bridge)
Listing of 4 new wallets: OKX & Bitget wallets, MetaMask Snap, and Keplr.
Listing of more tokens and even more.
A complete UX and UI overhaul, making it much more user-friendly than before.
2. Argent (Starknet Native Wallet)
The Argent Card, enabling users to spend Starknet assets in real life (public launch scheduled for 2025)
A gifting feature to easily onboard your frens onchain
Integration of AVNU as its swapping service, offering optimal trading execution directly from the wallet
The ability to personalize the Argent interface by adding a name, color, and emoji to the Argent X accounts
An Argent side panel, greatly improving UX for browser users
Want to stay updated on Argent in 2025? Follow Olli.
3. Braavos (Starknet Native Wallet)
Integration of AVNU for its swap feature, providing optimal trading execution directly from the wallet
New fraud detection capabilities for enhanced user security
Notifications to keep users informed about the market
Integration of DeFi strategies directly into the wallet, enabling yield farming without leaving the wallet interface. Example 1, Example 2, Example 3.
A Braavos side panel, greatly improving UX for browser users
4. AVNU (DEX aggregator)
Integration of multiple DEXs: StarkDeFi, Nostra, Haiko pools, Haiko strategies, Haiko solvers, Ekubo Oracle pools.
Two major wallet integrations: Keplr and MetaMask Snap
Market page, tracking the metrics of tokens listed on Starknet
First and only Paymaster on Starknet and Guide for dApps integration
Gas fee token support, allowing all Starknet ecosystem tokens to be used as gas fee tokens by traders.
Exact Amount Out Swap feature, allowing traders to receive the exact number of tokens they want from a trade
Automatic token listing, listing new Starknet tokens at block time
AVNU Community Token Group, a group of Starknet experts to verify and validate tokens for the community
Want to stay updated on AVNU in 2025? Follow Mentor and Endrit.
5. Ekubo (the most efficient AMM on the entire market)
Multiple UI, UX, and performance improvements: UI & UX updates - speed enhancements
Want to stay updated on Ekubo in 2025? Follow TEU.
6. Paradex (Starknet appchain currently focusing on Perp trading)
Integration of Braavos and Argent wallets on Paradex, facilitating onboarding for Starknet users
Introducing Dime (Paradex ecosystem token), vision, roadmap, and an upcoming airdrop
Listing a ton of tokens and improving UX and UI; if you have any feedback or requests, contact the team on Discord; they listen to everyone and implement suggestions quickly
Want to stay updated on Paradex in 2025? Follow fiddybps1.
7. Vesu (Innovative Money Market)
Publication of Vesu's risk framework, providing users with a clear view of the risks of each market
First open-source liquidation bot in partnership with Pragma, enabling anyone to run it and help maintain protocol safety
Multiply feature, allowing quick and easy execution of looping strategies
First pool curator on Starknet, boosting Starknet DeFi and providing diverse options for farmers
Launch of Vesu pools, allowing anyone to create lending and borrowing pools
Want to stay updated on Vesu in 2025? Follow CramJam.
8. Nimbora (Pooling Protocol and STRK Liquid Staking)
Note: Nimbora's X account is currently suspended; therefore, links to tweets are unavailable 😢
Launch of omnichain strategies on Mainnet, enabling users to farm protocols on other chains (currently Ethereum) directly from Starknet
Full audit of contracts
Instant withdrawals feature powered by AVNU, allowing users to bypass the 2–3 day waiting period for Nimbora strategies
Launch of its liquid staking service, fully audited: sSTRK
Continuous release of attractive new strategies throughout the year
Want to stay updated on Nimbora in 2025? Follow NimboraIntern.
9. Nostra (Money Market & DEX)
Release of Nostra bridge, leveraging Layerswap backend
Release of mobile compatibility, enabling access to Nostra services directly from mobile
Integration of AVNU Paymaster, enabling gas fee payments in more tokens than ETH and STRK
Cross-chain governance service integration with Snapshot Labs
New feature for repaying existing collateral in any token (e.g., paying ETH debt in STRK)
Overall, Nostra’s governance has been very active since the token launch
10. zkLend (Money Market)
Want to stay updated on zkLend in 2025? Follow zkLendIntern.
11. Realms (Gaming Ecosystem)
Ethereum <> Starknet NFT bridge release, enabling Realms NFT holders to bridge these NFTs to Starknet
Bootstrapping and funding multiple new games and tools built around the Realms ecosystem
Want to stay updated on the Realms ecosystem in 2025? Follow Calculat, Secretive, and LordOfaFew.
12. Haiko (Innovative AMM)
Launch of Ekubo solvers, adding powerful features for Haiko vaults (Zero-Cost Rebalancing, Impermanent Loss Caps, Private Vaults, Pool-Level Governance)
13. Bountive (No-Loss Prize Savings Protocol)
Launch of a new version of Bountive, greatly improving UX/UI
Numerous raffles shipped throughout the year.
Want to stay updated on Bountive in 2025? Follow Hugo.
14. Carmine (Options Protocol)
Launch of its swap feature, powered by AVNU
Launch of Price Protect feature, providing more control and security
Announcement of participation in Chainlink's BUILD program, accelerating the use of Chainlink CCIP
15. Raize Club (Prediction Market)
Multi-token support with USDC, ETH, and STRK in partnership with AVNU, enabling users to bet using various tokens
Custom market creation feature, enabling anyone to create their own event market with 2% of the total bet pool allocated to market creators
16. STRKfarm (Yield Aggregator)
Performance fee of 10% on each harvest from looping strategies, allocated to the team and the protocol
Want to stay updated on STRKFarm in 2025? Follow Akira.
17. Layer Akira (CLOB DEX)
18. Opus (Cross-Margin Credit Protocol & Starknet Native Stablecoin)
Insurance coverage for all depositors starting January 1st 2025, protecting against hacks and critical errors
19. Everai (NFT Collection)
NFT bridge between Ethereum and Starknet, enabling Everai holders to transfers their NFTs to Starknet
Vikare Battle game launch, a TG based game
20. Pyramid (NFT Marketplace)
NFT launchpad, enabling anyone to create NFT collections on Starknet
Launch of Gameland, a section of the Pyramid marketplace dedicated to showcasing on-chain gaming projects and their NFT collections
Stark Guardians NFT staking feature for earning points redeemable for exclusive benefits in the Stark Guardians ecosystem
Want to stay updated on Pyramid in 2025? Follow Area51.
21. Flex Marketplace (NFT Marketplace)
22. Carbonable (RWA focused on Carbon Credit)
New project launch aimed at restoring mangroves in Myanmar's Karathuru Township
Community sale launch linked to this restoration project
23. Focus Tree (Consumer dApp focus on improving User Focus)
24. Perp DEX
Unfortunately, no Perp DEX is currently available directly on Starknet L2. The good news is that three are finally coming:
Extended, currently a Perp DEX powered by StarkEx, with plans to migrate to Starknet L2 in the future
Gojo, a GMX v2 fork (as far as I know), already live on Starknet testnet (the first and only Perp DEX live on testnet)
Goku, a Perp DEX powered by Metavault, expected to launch on Starknet in the coming months
25. Influence (Gaming Project)
Session Keys feature release in partnership with Argent, enhancing the UX for players
Want to stay updated on Influence in 2025? Follow Web3zy.
26. Stark Arcade (Gaming Studio)
Metal Slug game launch (currently in testnet)
27. Unruggable (Tokens Launchpad)
28. Ventory (NFT Marketplace and Tokens Launchpad)
Launch of Ventory Fun, a Tokens and NFTs launchpad
29. Brother (Starknet main Memecoin)
To give your some context, here is the Brother creation history:
Starknet broke all records with the Flippy Flop campaign (857 peak TPS - 127 TPS substained thoughroupt the whole day)
Bankless co-founder @RyanSAdams celebrated this event without mentioning Starknet.
Odin, StarkWare’s Ecosystem Lead, asked him to give credit to Starknet with a simple “Starknet Brother”.
Ryan replied with a “Starknet Brother”.
Vitalik answered him with a Starknet Brother meme.
The community took it further by creating a memecoin: @StarknetBro (NFA, I’m a bag holder).
Phantom, the leading Solana wallet, joined the party
The rest is history
As the main memecoin of the ecosystem, many projects support the Brother movement and have already integrated the Brother token into their dApps:
Purchasing NFTs on Pyramid using the Brother token
Paying gas fees on AVNU using the Brother token
Bountive organized a raffle with Brother (community ensuring it was the most successful raffle for Bountive, gathering over $300k TVL)
Dope Wars launched a game season in partnership with Brother, enabling Dope Wars to achieve at this moment its ATH in games played
In addition, you can:
Set a Brother domain name ID, here is the audit of this domain name ID
The brothercycle is real.
30. Main Infrastructure Projects:
Karnot & Madara (Starknet Appchains)
On the appchains side, the puzzle is finally complete, and everything is now ready to host more appchains on Starknet.
Starknet stack launch, enabling anyone to leverage Starknet stack to create its own appchain for only $5k per month
Karnot-Aligned collaboration, providing appchain builders with cheap and fast offchain verification while leveraging Ethereum security
Madara and Deoxys merge for a performance-optimized full node
Ability to sync all Starknet full node clients (Juno, Madara, Pathfinder) to a Madara appchain
Dojo & Cartridge (gaming)
On the gaming infrastructure side, Cartridge and Dojo are the main drivers.
Internal implementation of Telegram wallet with Cartridge Controller
Partnership between Dojo and Celestia to launch appchains for gaming leveraging Celestia DA
Overall, the Dojo ecosystem has evolved significantly in just a few months.
Pragma (Native ZK Oracle)
Pragma is the only Starknet’s native oracle.
Pragma v2 release, offering a transparent and optimized oracle for creating custom feeds and accessing high-quality data across chains
Kaiko Data integration as a Pragma data publisher, delivering institutional-grade crypto price data to Starknet
Merkle feeds introduction for publishing, retrieving, and verifying complex data efficiently
8️⃣ 2025 for Starknet
For 2025, you can expect:
Even more performance: Higher TPS capacity, lower gas fees, faster transaction finality, and improved transaction speed
Increased decentralization and security
More Bitcoin initiatives
More dApps, partnerships, and integrations
1. Performance improvements
Let’s begin with gas fees. There’s growing concern over the steadily increasing demand for Ethereum blobs, which now often exceeds the target blob rate. Two potential solutions exist to tackle this challenge:
Wait for Ethereum to scale its blob capacity.
Improve rollup data efficiency.
StarkWare has taken a proactive approach by introducing a new roadmap for the coming months, focusing entirely on lowering fees for Starknet users and reducing dependency on Ethereum blobs. The first step, Starknet v0.13.3, is already live on Mainnet, featuring a blob gas mechanism that is 5x cheaper. The result? Significantly reduced gas fees for users, an initiative praised by Vitalik himself.
Volition is also on the roadmap (timeline TBD). This feature will let developers choose between storing data on Ethereum (maximum security at a higher cost) or other DA solutions (slightly reduced security but significantly lower cost).
For TPS capacity, transaction speed, and finality, two main optimizations are coming:
Cairo Native (planned for February 2025), which will significantly optimize the Starknet sequencer. Here is the improvement prediction from the CEO of Lambda Class (the company leading this optimization).
Stwo (planned for April 2025), StarkWare’s next-gen prover, which is 1000x more efficient (🤯) than the current Starknet prover and 100x better than any prover on the market. Stwo will enable faster and cheaper proofs on Starknet. Learn more about it.
These two optimizations will combine to significantly increase TPS capacity (likely into the thousands), reduce fees, and improve both finality and transaction speed.
2. Increased decentralization and security
In terms of decentralization and security, the Starknet ecosystem is working tirelessly to make Starknet a fully decentralized and secure PoS network. Here are the key initiatives:
The first phase of staking is already implemented, and I believe at least two more phases will roll out this year (this is my personal view, not a promise from StarkWare).
The Starknet Security Council is coming soon.
Major advances in quantum computing are accelerating potential blockchain threats. However, the STARK technology powering Starknet is already quantum-resistant. Making Starknet a fully quantum-resistant network would require only two months of work. More details here.
Starknet currently boasts the most decentralized stack of all L2s, and by a wide margin.
Given these developments, I believe Starknet will become a Stage 1 Rollup on L2Beat by Q1–Q2 2025, truly quantum-resistant as soon as StarkWare prioritizes it (or when quantum risks escalate), and fully decentralized by late 2025 or early 2026. Starknet is well on its way to becoming a truly secure and decentralized L2.
3. Bitcoin initiatives
For Bitcoin, there is no public plan I can share yet, but know that StarkWare will double down on it during 2025 to position Starknet as the unified layer between the Ethereum and Bitcoin communities.
4. More dApps, partnerships, and integrations
Finally, in terms of more dApps, partnerships, and integrations, here are the things that are expected to happen:
StarkWare is working to integrate Starknet into IBC, enabling seamless interoperability with the Cosmos ecosystem and all its chains. Hopefully, this will be ready by 2025.
More Bitcoin project partnerships.
More appchains (and hopefully L3s), thanks to Madara, Karnot, Cartridge, StarkWare, and Herodotus. For appchains, anyone can already launch their own Starknet appchain for just $5k per month. For L3s, Herodotus is working to make this a reality.
More AI projects: AI and blockchain are one of the most incredible intersections of this decade, and this revolution is unfolding on Starknet. Giza is already here, Ritual is coming soon, Realms is making significant progress on AI agents, and a $250k prize pool hackathon focused on AI agents is currently running.
A Perp DEX on Starknet L2 will finally arrive, thanks to teams like Gojo, Goku, Extended, and potentially others.
Hyperlane-powered bridges.
Argent card public launch.
Starknet zkEVM appchains, driven by Madara, Karnot, and Kakarot.
Telegram wallets.
What I hope to see in addition (not guaranteed, just my POV):
zkLogin to simplify user onboarding on Starknet.
More bridge integrations. Specifically, I hope to see Starknet integrated with Layer Zero (Stargate), Socket (Bungee), Across, and Jumper.
Native USDC integration on Starknet.
Limit orders enabled by Ekubo or AVNU (or both).
A v3,3 DEX.
More DEPIN, AI and RWA projects.
Native integration of Phantom, MetaMask, and Rabby wallets on Starknet.
Conclusion
Starknet’s resilience throughout 2024 has been nothing short of extraordinary. Despite external challenges and waves of doubt, the ecosystem demonstrated its robustness by continuing to build, innovate, and improve. This unwavering commitment has resulted in a solid foundation that positions Starknet as one of the strongest players in the L2 landscape.
Everything is now in place for the next phase of Starknet's journey—one defined by acceleration, decentralization and expansion. With its fundamentals at an all-time high, a vibrant & active ecosystem, and an ambitious roadmap for 2025, Starknet is ready to deliver on its promise of unparalleled performance and usability: for the Ethereum community and also the Bitcoin one.
2024 was the year of preparation and resilience. 2025 will be the year Starknet truly shines.
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe for free to never miss an important update from the Starknet ecosystem!
