Starknet monthly recap #15: September
All you need to know about Starknet in September
Welcome to the 15th edition of my monthly recap, where I bring you the most important updates and developments from the Starknet ecosystem!
📣 Important news of the month
Let's start this recap with the three main Starknet narratives: Bitcoin, Staking, and Kakarot.
🔷 Bitcoin cooking of the month
Before diving into the latest Bitcoin news, I highly recommend reading my in-depth article on Starknet over Bitcoin. It covers everything you need to know, particularly the immense potential this vision holds for Starknet, its ecosystem, and even the entire crypto space, as this bold plan could literally shift the entire market paradigm. You can become an expert on the topic in just 20 minutes, so what are you waiting for? 🧑🔬
Three major developments related to Bitcoin took place this month. First, StarkWare announced a partnership with sCrypt to develop a PoC bridge design using OP_CAT-based covenants and ZK technology. The ultimate goal is to tackle the engineering challenges of building a canonical Bitcoin <> L2 bridge, ensuring StarkWare is fully prepared to deploy this bridge between Starknet and Bitcoin as soon as (and if) OP_CAT is reactivated on Bitcoin.
To educate the community on the benefits (and potential risks) of OP_CAT for Bitcoin, StarkWare launched a $1M OP_CAT fund two months ago. The first beneficiary of this fund is now known: @LimeChainHQ, which will explore how OP_CAT can significantly improve token trading on Bitcoin. If you have a research idea related to OP_CAT and are seeking funding, feel free to apply to this research fund now.
Finally, the StarkWare exploration team launched Raiko, a ZK Bitcoin client implemented in Cairo. Raiko aims to bring trustless validation of the Bitcoin blockchain through STARK proof verification.
🔷 Road to decentralization: Governance and Staking
Starknet is the first L2 to introduce staking directly on L2. This means the STRK token will soon have a new utility: securing the network through staking. This adds to its current utilities of paying gas fees and governance.
Speaking of governance, the first community vote on Mainnet has taken place! Powered by SnapshotLabs' new product (Snapshot X), this fully onchain vote gave STRK holders the chance to weigh in on staking parameters, including inflation and rewards. Below are the results of this vote 👇
The first phase of staking will be completed by Q4 2024, allowing anyone to become a validator (with a minimum of 20k STRK and it will be expected to run a full node) or a delegator.
I can’t wait to stake my STRK through a liquid staking protocol and farm DeFi Spring with these liquid-stakingSTRK, cumulating these two sources of rewards 👩🌾 (nfa dyor ofc 🙉)
Several key staking service providers have already announced their support for STRK staking, including Twinstake, Astrarizon, Allnode, and Karnot (which will offer 0% commission on delegations!!).
🔷 EVM coming soon to Starknet
Starknet is about to become the first dual-VM Validity Rollup, allowing developers who use EVM-compatible languages like Solidity to launch their dApps directly on Starknet without needing to learn Cairo. By the end of Q4 2024, we’ll have both EVM and Cairo dApps on Starknet L2, working together! This is fucking huge.
For more details, you can read this Q&A with Kakarot's co-founder and CEO. You can also learn more about the Kakarot vision for Starknet here.
Speaking of Kakarot, they have just completed their audit by Zellic!
🔷 Buildoors and devs, these two news are for you
If you want to take advantage of the three narratives mentioned above and benefit from a high-performance network, now is the perfect time! First, because the next two Hacker Houses are happening soon, providing devs and builders with a chance to accelerate their projects and reach production-ready status:
Bangkok (Thailand) 06.11.24 - 10.11.24
Bangalore (India) 29.11.24 - 03.12.24
Secondly, because the Starknet Foundation has launched its grant hub, listing all the available support programs available for Starknet projects and showcasing the current grantees. If you’re building on Starknet, don’t hesitate to apply!
🔷 Starknet, the most open source stack of the market for a L2
Stone v3, the prover used in SHARP v6, is now open source. This means everyone can now see how Stone boosts SHARP's efficiency by 10x 🤓
📢 Starknet Ecosystem Update
🔷 Stats of the month
Starknet’s TPS capacity has significantly increased with the release of the Bolt upgrade last month. Although the upgrade's announced figures were theoretical, we now have proof that these numbers are a reality—surpassing expectations: 503 TPS were achieved on Starknet Mainnet!
Developers are the backbone of any ecosystem—without them, there’s no quality infrastructure or great dApps for users. The good news is that more and more devs are diving into Starknet at an impressive pace:
Finally, the gaming ecosystem powered by Dojo continues to grow—and faster than ever. In just two months, they have more than doubled the number of projects building and powered by Dojo:
🔷 Argent shipping non-stop
This month, Argent released two major features. The first one is 'Gifting', making it easier to onboard your friends to Starknet by sending them funds, even if they don’t have a Starknet compatible wallet.
The second one is the 'Invest' feature, allowing you to put your assets to work within Starknet's DeFi, without leaving your Argent wallet.
🔷 And Ekubo too!
Ekubo isn’t making much noise but continues shipping new features. Notably, they’ve increased quote speed by ~10x this month, and executed two proposals on Mainnet. The most significant for us being the Ekubo buyback which has now started.
🔷 Haiko’s solvers now live on Mainnet
Haiko launched its solvers on Mainnet, bringing several optimizations for its strategies, including:
Zero cost rebalancing
Impermanent Loss Caps
Private Vaults
Vault-level Governance
🔷 Vesu launches a new feature: Flashloan-Powered Multiply
Powered by Ekubo and audited by Cairoaudit, you can now instantly borrow using flashloans to maximize your earnings on Vesu.
🔷 A unique new feature on Starknet
Stark Guardians has launched (in testnet) a new feature: lending and borrowing of NFTs! Hopefully, it will be live on Mainnet in the following weeks.
🔷 LORDS new tokenomics
Realms have introduced new tokenomics for their ecosystem’s token (LORDS). It can now be staked to receive revenues generated by their ecosystem (games and marketplace). Many other features will be rolled out over time. If you want to learn more, I highly recommend reading this blog post and this thread.
🔷 New strategy and an audit for STRKFarm
STRKFarm, a DeFi yield aggregator creating strategies on top, has launched a new ETH-based strategy on Mainnet, offering around 20% APY: ETH Sensei.
Make sure to read the risks carefully if you plan to use it. Speaking of risks, they’ve also just been audited by Cairoaudit.
🔷 Nimbora lost ~30% of its TVL
Penpie, a protocol built on Pendle that Nimbora used to boost rewards, experienced a security breach, resulting in the draining of the npstETH pool of Nimbora. The issue didn’t come from Nimbora itself but from the underlying protocol where Nimbora was depositing funds for farming. Unfortunately, it’s a reminder of the inherent risks of DeFi. Here is Nimbora's post-mortem and their plan to reimburse the affected users.
🔹 Alpha Zone 💅
This month, four projects have launched on Mainnet:
Loot Survivor: the survival game where survival isn’t an option.
Layer Akira: Starknet’s only CLOB DEX (closed Mainnet)
Opus Money: a new money market introducing Starknet’s first truly native stablecoin.
Brew Master: the first game of the Boltwade Studio.
Speaking of Mainnet releases, many more games are set to launch in the coming months, including Eternum, Blobarena, and Joker of Neons, to name a few. You can dive deeper into these projects by watching the replay of the Dojo Demo Day.
In terms of Testnet releases, I’ve discovered three new games:
Grid Game: but you’ll need to DM Ayush for access
Block Heroes: A very cool fantasy RPG
Diamond Pit: A Minecraft/Roblox-inspired mining game
As for new projects building on Starknet, many have recently popped up:
The biggest one is Keplr, the leading wallet from the Cosmos ecosystem, which will soon be integrating Starknet
Here's a list of five new gaming projects that received grants (over $60k in total) from the Realms folks
Stakestark: A liquid staking protocol
Cyclone: A privacy mixer (similar to Tornado Cash) for Starknet
StarknetFeed: Aggregating content from key Starknet ecosystem figures and delivering it straight to your Telegram.
Starkbot: An AI-powered hub on Starknet, specializing in social listening and real-time insights.
Tauvlo: A tokenized real estate investment Web3 platform
🧑🌾 What did I do on Starknet in September?
I’ve finally reached the Ekubo bag size I was aiming for, meaning I stopped my DCA buys in September and now I just plan to hold it.
With Starknet’s gaming ecosystem booming, I also took the opportunity to try out several games this month, including: StarkSailor, Dojomon & Eternum, Boltwade, Block Heroes, Diamond Pit, and a mining game. I highly recommend you try them out—there are some really promising games in the mix 🙂
As for DeFi, I’m continuing to farm DeFi Spring on:
Carmine: where I’m providing liquidity with most of my STRK, earning an APY between 30% and 40%.
Nimbora: where I’ve allocated most of my ETH, yielding around 17% APR, all of my DAI yielding around 22%, and a portion of my USDC at around 23%.
Vesu: where I’ve placed some of my USDC (11% APY), along with smaller portions of STRK (8% APY) and ETH (9% APY). Starting now, I’m sending all the STRK I claim each week from DeFi spring to Vesu. While Vesu doesn’t offer the highest APRs, I want to diversify my risk and gain exposure to this very promising protocol.
STRKfarm: new to the list, I’ve put part of my USDC here (28% APR).
As always, if you decide to use these protocols, be careful about the risks and DYOR them carefully. On my side, I plan to deep dive into Opus during October to assess whether I’ll allocate some funds there. I will let you know!
📰 Some of the Best Content of the Month
🔷 Everything you need to know about Starknet over Bitcoin
Starknet plans to scale Bitcoin alongside Ethereum, becoming the first-ever L2². This will forever transform Starknet, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the entire crypto market. Here's an article with everything you need to know.
🔷 Comprehensive guide to Eternum: The flagship game of the Realms ecosystem
Eternum is finally launching on Starknet Mainnet in Q4 2024, marking a significant milestone after over 3 years of development. There's nothing better than the Eternum Whitepaper to prepare yourself for this massive launch.
🔷 Starknet’s key narratives for the upcoming months
Starknet has achieved remarkable milestones over the past months, and what’s coming in Q4 and beyond is even more exciting. Here’s a short article detailing everything you need to know.
🔷 Ekubo DAO treasury report
Here’s a brief thread presenting Ekubo’s treasury, its evolution, and current status.
None of the content of this newsletter is financial advice. Always do your own research.
Thank you for reading, and see you in Uptober for the next monthly recap ⏳
