Tag: zk-rollup

Four Challenges to StarkNet’s Success

David BarretoLeave a comment
Boxing match

tl;dr

  1. Vendor lock-in: difficulty moving away from StarkWare’s ecosystem
  2. System centralization: the Sequencer and the Prover are operated by StarkWare
  3. Steep learning curve: Cairo is hard to learn and the documentation has gaps
  4. Upgradable smart contracts: StarkWare can make changes at any time
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Starknet’s Architecture Review

David Barreto2 Comments
StarkNet's logo

The architecture shown in this article has inaccuracies. Do not use it as a reference until updated (if ever). In the meantime, refer to the official Starknet docs.

tl;dr

  • Starknet’s user accounts (wallets) are implemented as smart contracts.
  • The system has 3 off-chain components (Sequencer, Prover and Full Nodes) and 2 on-chain (Verifier and Core).
  • The current system architecture is able to handle more transactions than Ethereum but with a higher delay for finality.
  • A dual checkpoint mechanism has been proposed to reduce time to finality without compromising cost.
  • An L2 transaction can be on any of these states: NOT_RECEIVED, RECEIVED, PENDING, ACCEPTED_ON_L2, ACCEPTED_ON_L1 or REJECTED.
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The Three Paths for Smart Contract Scalability

David Barreto2 Comments

tl;dr;

  • A smart contract blockchain can scale with hardware, with an optimistic rollup or a zk-rollup
  • Solana’s hardware scaling solution suffers from lack of decentralization and sync issues
  • Optimistic rollups (Optimism) rely on off-chain verifiers and has a 6 days finality on L1
  • zk-rollups (StarkNet) submits and verifies validity proofs on-chain increasing security but also data usage of L1
  • Optimistic rollups are cheaper but zk-rollups are more secure
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