Official announcements from StarkWare or press releases detailing grant recipients

StarkWare to Scale Bitcoin and Ethereum with $1M ZK-STARK Initiative in Six Months

Jun 4, 2024, 01:50 PM

StarkWare, the developer behind Starknet, has announced a significant initiative to scale Bitcoin using Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK-STARKs). This move will make Starknet the first network to settle simultaneously on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. The initiative includes a $1 million grant fund to support research into Bitcoin's OP_CAT proposal. Starknet aims to enhance Bitcoin's scalability, addressing one of its major challenges by increasing transaction throughput to thousands per second. Eli Ben-Sasson, who first introduced the concept at a 2013 Bitcoin conference, leads this effort. The integration is expected to be completed within six months, marking a pivotal moment in blockchain technology, potentially unifying the two largest cryptocurrencies and promoting financial autonomy.