Starknet monthly recap #21: April

All you need to know about Starknet in April

May 20, 2025

Welcome to the 21st edition of my monthly recap, where I bring you the most important updates and developments from the Starknet ecosystem!

3 weeks late on this edition; ngl, first time in 21 editions I fumble the schedule like this. Bear with me anon, alpha’s still hot.

📣 Important news of the month

🔹 Bitcoin: moar use cases, moar team members, moar research…

The Starknet ecosystem is laying the groundwork to welcome the Bitcoin community and become Bitcoin’s execution layer (alongside Ethereum). And things are now officially accelerating. Let’s start with the new use cases.

First up, the Bitcoin <> Starknet connection keeps getting stronger:

Garden Finance, an intent-based bridge, now supports Starknet; allowing users to move BTC from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperliquid, Arbitrum, Berachain, and Base directly to Starknet.
Atomiq Labs, a cross-chain swap protocol, has launched BTC swaps between Bitcoin and Starknet.

Interoperability is improving… cool cool, but what can you actually do with BTC on Starknet?

Great question. In simple terms: you can now put your BTC to work.

wBTC is now incentivized through DeFi Spring across lending protocols: you can lend your wBTC on Vesu or Nostra and currently earn ~7% APR.
And to make things even easier, you can use the One-Click Earn feature from Braavos: bridge BTC → wrap to wBTC → lend on Vesu; all in a single click.

If you want the full picture of what’s possible with Bitcoin on Starknet, here’s the complete list.

In addition, Bitcoin staking is expected to arrive on Starknet in Q3 2025. It will unlock three key benefits:

Sustainable rewards for BTC holders
More security for the Starknet network
A powerful primitive for devs to build on

And because we want moar Bitcoin use cases on Starknet, and fast, a true Bitcoin OG and degen, Jack Liu, has joined StarkWare to accelerate BTC integrations and dApp development on Starknet. He’ll manage a $2M seed fund for Bitcoin Dapps, focused on consumer-facing use cases on Starknet.

In terms of research, StarkWare dropped a new breakthrough research paper: ColliderVM; a protocol enabling stateful computation on Bitcoin without fraud proofs. This is a major improvement over BitVM.

Compared to BitVM, ColliderVM is:

Faster: no 7-day fraud window needed
More capital efficient: no need for the bridge operator to fully collateralize withdrawals

Note that this is still in the R&D phase and far from production-ready. But it demonstrates StarkWare’s commitment to scaling Bitcoin and turning Starknet into a Bitcoin execution layer; following the most trust-minimized path possible, with the ultimate goal being OP_CAT, the holy grail for enabling a permissionless design.

🔷 Starknet is soon halfway through its full staking implementation

StarkWare is currently transitioning Starknet into a fully decentralized, PoS-operated network. This transition is structured in 4 phases.

Phase 1 has been live since November 2024, and Phase 2 is now live on Testnet. As a reminder, Phase 2 introduces two major improvements over Phase 1:

Validator Block Attestation: Starknet will now run in epochs, with validators required to attest to randomly selected blocks.
Commission Changes: Validators can increase their commission, but only under strict conditions.

Phase 2 is expected to go live on Mainnet in June.

🔷 The L3 building block on Starknet is now live

In April, Karnot released a temporary gamechain called Gridy; a L3 deployed on top of Starknet.

This 14-hour ephemeral chain was designed to prove that L3s on Starknet are now both possible and hyper-efficient. And the results speak for themselves:

220 sustained UOPS (over 400 TPS during the event), breaking L2Beat’s previous record.

But the real edge over competing solutions is that Karnot fully abstracted the L1 → L2 → L3 stack. Users played directly from Starknet L2 or Ethereum L1: no wallet downloads, no bridging, no network switching. The Starknet ecosystem is fully abstracting blockchain complexity so users can enjoy Web3 without friction.

With this new L3 primitive, Starknet now offers devs the full spectrum:

Starknet L2 → for maximum composability
Starknet L2 appchains → for maximum flexibility
Starknet L3 appchains → for hyperscaling and ultimate adaptability

Just build on Starknet.

🔷 Just build on Starknet… with all the support you need

The Starknet Foundation is rolling out several new initiatives to help builders kick off their Starknet journey and shine.

Propulsion v2: this program covers gas fees for eligible dApp users, up to $1M in total coverage. More details.
Payments Builder Grants: a program focused on payment-centric projects. Eligible teams receive monthly STRK grants to support user acquisition. More info.
Starknet Startup Houses (formerly Hacker Houses): two new in-person events coming up next month:
- Monterrey, Mexico → June 18–20
- Cannes, France → June 25–29
8-week Accelerator with Upright Ventures: a new accelerator in partnership with Upright Ventures, featuring an 8-week virtual program covering: Fundraising - Partnership strategy - Go-to-market - Tech support - Tokenomics… everything you need as a builder.

🔷 Cairo and Stwo are bringing more ZK diversity to Ethereum L1

Ethereum’s future is ZK; that much is clear. But if the entire ZK layer depends on the same core components, a single critical flaw could bring the whole system down.

Kakarot is mitigating that risk by introducing an entirely different stack; built on top of the CairoVM and Stwo.

And now, Kakarot can generate proofs of Ethereum L1 blocks, becoming the first project to deliver an alternative ZK stack for Ethereum. Next milestone: proving a block in just 8 seconds; faster than Ethereum’s own 12-second block time.

📢 Starknet Ecosystem Update

🔷 Focus Tree: +1M students coming onchain

Focus Tree has launched a new wallet that allows its users to finally interact onchain, and with zero blockchain friction. This is made possible by:

Paymaster provided by AVNU
An invisible wallet co-developed with Argent X

The results? Almost 300k users onboarded on Starknet in just 3 weeks 🤯
And this is only the beginning: both in terms of users and the range of onchain activities they’ll soon access.

On a side note, Starknet also crossed 5M deployed account contracts in April.

🔷 Paradex: relentless shipping, nonstop growth

There’s not a single month at Paradex without an ATH, a new feature, or a major optimization. In April, we got all three:

Perp options are now live for all users
The Gigavault cap was increased to $30M. As a reminder, the vault is managed by the Paradex team and earns revenue from market making, liquidations, and funding spreads; 100% of it is redistributed to LPs
Their mobile app is now available on both Google Play and the iOS App Store, making the platform easily accessible on mobile.

And in terms of metrics, they hit an ATH in daily open interest.

I’ll say it again: if you like Hyperliquid, you’ll love Paradex. Don’t sleep on it.

🔷 The most advanced onchain game is baaaack

Eternum is back with the launch of its Season 1, bringing major upgrades over S0:

Social login & EVM wallet support via the Cartridge Controller (Discord, Metamask, Phantom etc.)
AI agent integration
Significant gameplay and performance optimizations

And yes, since I’m writing this update a bit late… the game is already fully live. Here’s the full guide to get started and understand everything.

🔷 Swap until you make it

Argent has launched a Loot Box campaign, rewarding users who swap on the wallet with randomized prizes.

Here’s what you need to know:

Obviously, not every swap will earn you a prize (it’s randomized)
Minimum swap size: $10

Need more funds to swap? Argent has partnered with LayerSwap to launch Easy Bridging, making it much easier to fund your Argent Mobile wallet from any chain or CEX.

🔹 Alpha Zone 💅

This month, 7 new projects went live on Starknet Mainnet:

Blobarena: a Pokémon-like game with a real-world-integrated universe (AMMA)
Ponziland: an onchain strategy game where players buy, sell, and manage land
Metacube: a Minecraft-inspired mini-game
Coloniz: a fully onchain social network, similar to Twitter and Patreon
Request Finance: a platform for handling crypto and fiat operations
OneRamp: a payment platform focused on Saharan Africa
Starknet Arcade: a fully onchain casino

On Testnet, two new projects launched this month:

Curvy Protocol: a privacy-preserving transfer protocol using stealth addresses
StarkPump: a new token launchpad

As for new projects building on Starknet, here are the ones discovered in April:

Aligned Stake: an analytics platform for STRK staking
Caddy Finance: one-click yield vaults for Bitcoiners
Evolute Studio: a gaming studio building three different games
Kapan Finance: a debt refinancing protocol
Mystery Gems: a GameFi project
DeFi Space: an arena for AI agents
Coin Nexus: a gaming x AI project
Cavos: a mobile focused DeFi application
Mobula: a full-stack data infrastructure provider
Bet Share: a prediction market for sports events
Kharon Pay: a new crypto payment protocol
Vex: a new DEX, not on Starknet, but powered by Stwo (StarkWare’s next-gen prover)
Solo Safe: a tool for offline asset transfers
Bonus for the diggers out there: here are the 4 winning projects from the Starknet Hacker Games