Starknet monthly recap #17: November
All you need to know about Starknet in November
Welcome to the 17th edition of my monthly recap, where I bring you the most important updates and developments from the Starknet ecosystem!
📣 Important news of the month
🔷 New Starknet roadmap
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, focused entirely on lowering fees for Starknet users and reducing its dependency on Ethereum blobs. Meanwhile, Cairo-Native and Stwo remain on track for Q1-Q2 2025, bringing increased TPS, faster finality, and a significantly improved UX and DevX.
The first part of this new roadmap, Starknet v0.13.3, has already launched on Mainnet, featuring a blob gas mechanism that is 5x cheaper. The outcome? Noticeably lower gas fees for users.
Even Vitalik himself highlighted this proactive strategy. Probably nothing.
🔷 STRK staking (phase 1) now live on Mainnet
Starknet is officially the first L2 to release a permissionless staking mechanism directly on an L2. This means you can now easily become a Validator or Delegator by staking or delegating your STRK tokens. Here’s everything you need to know about it and why it’s a big deal.
On that note, Bitwise, one of the largest and most well-known crypto managers in the US, has launched a Validator service for STRK staking, making Starknet the first L2 where they’re expanding. Probably nothing again.
By the way, if you want to stake, delegate, or monitor STRK staking metrics, here’s a list of all projects supporting STRK staking.
🔷 Bitcoin cooking
The vision of Starknet scaling Bitcoin, in addition to Ethereum, is coming closer month by month. This month, three major developments have taken place in this project.
The first is the release of an official design for a trustless bridge between an L2 and Bitcoin (on Bitcoin Signet, with OP_CAT enabled). This means that as soon as (and if) OP_CAT is reintroduced on Bitcoin, Starknet will be able to easily connect to Bitcoin.
The second milestone is the release of a groundbreaking paper demonstrating that covenants (a key element of OP_CAT) are already possible on Bitcoin without requiring a soft fork. While the proposed solution is very expensive and likely economically unviable, the main takeaway is that OP_CAT wouldn’t introduce anything new or scary to Bitcoin, as covenants have existed all along.
Finally, a new optimization has been discovered, reducing opcode count from the current state-of-the-art ~296K to ~211K (~28% smaller) and lowering stack usage from 979 elements (just under Bitcoin’s 1000 limit) to 732—a much more manageable cost, representing an improvement of ~26%.
🔷 The second community vote for STRK holders
Another vote took place this month, this time on the Termination of Transaction Versions 0, 1, and 2.
In this proposal, Starknet's main contributors suggested that the sequencer discontinue support for these transaction versions in an upcoming update. This change aims to prepare for the integration of the mempool and fee market, expected within the next 6–8 months. The vote resulted in an overwhelming majority in favor, with 99.9% voting "yes."
🔷 More security measures
As Starknet prioritizes security above all else, following the release of the first phase of staking, Starknet has also introduced its Security Council and its composition.
🔷 Starknet 🤝 Travala
As a Starknet user, you can now book flights, hotels, and activities worldwide thanks to Travala’s integration with Starknet.
Grinding is great, but remember to take a break sometimes, brothers.
📢 Starknet Ecosystem Update
🔹 Opium Metrics
The Starknet ecosystem is in an up only trend recently. Here are some key metrics:
Starknet and Base are the only L2s with positive net flows over the past month.
L2Beat is now using a new activity tracking metric, which is much better than traditional TPS: UOPS. This new measure accounts for Starknet's multicall feature, where a single transaction bundles multiple user operations. Starknet is currently ranked second in terms of the UOPS/TPS ratio.
Overall, sentiment around Starknet is shifting rapidly in a positive direction.
🔹 Braavos in full send mode
Braavos has shipped 3 main features this month.
The first one is a great UX improvement for mobile users: you can now send, swap, and invest in DeFi strategies available in the wallet for 0 gas fees.
Speaking of strategies, you don’t need to leave the wallet to invest in Nimbora’s great DeFi strategies; you can now do it directly from your Braavos wallet.
Finally, say goodbye forever to pop-ups with Braavos Side Panel, which allows you to have Braavos already open and ready to interact in your browser.
🔹 Argent Card
Do you want to spend your Starknet assets directly in real life? Soon, you’ll be able to, with the Argent card—allowing you to use your Starknet assets for daily needs. It will function as a true debit card.
Who needs banks when Starknet will soon meet all your financial needs?
🔹 Ekubo’s New UI interface
Ekubo’s main focus over the past month has been to greatly improve its UX for users.
🔹 Permissionless pools finally available on Vesu
You can now create your own lending/borrowing pools on Vesu, giving you the ability to do more with all of your assets. The first pools created by a third party come from none other than Re7Capital, a risk curator and DeFi expert.
🔹 Brother Growth
Like it or not, memecoins are a powerful asset class when it comes to marketing and growth tools. The Brother memecoin is the perfect example on Starknet, bringing a more degen culture and improved metrics to some Starknet dApps. Here are two examples, and here another one.
The great news is that the Starknet ecosystem clearly understands this and has started integrating BROTHER everywhere this month:
@avnu_fi verified the token on their dApp + you can even use it as a gas token
You can mint your Brother domain name ID, which is already listed on Argent wallet and will soon be available on other Starknet dApps.
The brothercycle is real.
🔹 Alpha Zone 💅
This month, a lot of projects have launched on Starknet Mainnet:
Jokers of Neon, a gaming project offering a Web2-like UX for players
Dope Wars, the OG gaming project of Starknet
zKube_Game, a gaming project powered by Dojo
Bountive, a no-loss lottery, now back on Mainnet
Blobarena, a Pokémon-like gaming project
Xar, a virtual reality game
A new TG game by Everai, the famous NFT collection of Starknet
MetalSlug, the latest game from the StarkArcade studio
tetadex, a new Perp DEX built on StarkEx
When it comes to Testnet, only one project has launched this past month, but it’s a major one: World ID (from Worldcoin), in partnership with Nethermind.
In terms of new projects building on Starknet, I discovered five this month:
iTokens, a project creating cryptocurrency indices and ETF-like tokens
Crowd Pass, a decentralized event management platform leveraging NFTs
PWN, a new lending protocol
Starksight, a new prediction market
ALFBOT, a TG trading bot
Spotnet, a spot leverage trading platform (a type of Perp but less risky)
🧑🌾 What did I do on Starknet in October?
In term of tokens:
I’m still holding my Ekubo bag—haven’t touched it and waiting patiently.
I’ve started accumulating LORDS (the token of the Realms ecosystem) as their flagship gaming project is launching on Mainnet in a few weeks. Plus, their recent AI integrations have caught my attention.
I’ve also added to my memecoin bag: Starknet Brother & ALF, and get rekted on a couple of other memecoins.
In term of DeFi:
I’m continuing to farm DeFi Spring, though the main change is that I’ve migrated my Carmine LPing to Vesu. Here’s a breakdown of my current farming allocations:
Nimbora:
Most of my ETH, yielding ~17% APR
All of my DAI, yielding ~18% APR
Some of my USDC, yielding ~25% APR
Vesu:
Most of my STRK, earning ~5% APY
Some USDC (~8% APY) and ETH (~7% APY)
STRKfarm:
A portion of my USDC, yielding ~20% APY
Some of my STRK, yielding ~8% APY
As always, if you decide to use these protocols, be mindful of the risks and DYOR thoroughly. The same goes for the tokens I mentioned above. Even though I have StarkWare’s approval on Twitter, don’t forget; I’m retarded af.
📰 Some of the Best Content of the Month
🔷 Starknet ecosystem map: Q4 Update
As time goes on, the number of projects building on Starknet keeps growing—and it’s accelerating! Here’s my latest updated ecosystem map, showcasing everything Starknet has to offer. You can find all projects and their Twitter profiles here.
🔷 Starknet starter pack: Users and devs Edition
Here’s a quick guide on why join the Starknet ecosystem and how to get started (wallets, on-ramps, bridges, ecosystem overview).
You can also check out this 2-minute recap of all the activities you can currently do on Starknet, both in terms of DeFi and gaming.
Finally, here are all the essential resources to start your Cairo journey.
🔷 Starknet ecosystem review by Messari
Messari, the renowned research firm, has published an in-depth analysis of the Starknet ecosystem. The report covers major DeFi dApps, growth metrics, and insights into the ecosystem’s development. If you want a recap, here's a TLDR tweet of the main takeaways along with some additional insights from me.
🔷 Deep dive article about Eternum
Eternum, the flagship game of the Realms ecosystem, is set to launch on Mainnet in just a few weeks. Get ready by diving into this very detailed article about the game.
🔷 Starknet Q3 recap & what’s next
A ton has happened in the Starknet ecosystem over the past three months; arguably, Starknet is one of the most active ecosystems right now. Here's a comprehensive recap of everything that went down and what’s coming next.
🔷 Realms ecosystem review by Bankless
Realms is a gaming ecosystem that powers a significant portion of Starknet’s gaming projects. Here are the six pillars of this innovative gaming studio.
🔷 Starknet unlocking web3 with a web2 like UX
The main bottleneck in the crypto space is the terrible UX, blocking the mass onboarding of users. Starknet addresses this issue by building an entire ecosystem that leverages the favorite features of Web2 users. Here's a quick article presenting these main features already available on Starknet.
None of the content of this newsletter is financial advice. Always do your own research.
Thank you for reading, and see you in November for the next monthly recap ⏳
