- Ethereum L2 developers StarkNet is taking its talents to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
- The team plans to extend its protocol to support Bitcoin, allowing dApp developers to settle on both Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains.
- This will improve Bitcoin’s scalability by thousands of degrees.
- The news comes as several contentious developments to improve Bitcoin’s blockchain – specifically, the OP_CAT upgrade – enter community discourse.
Bitcoin is evolving.
The historic cryptocurrency has spent most of the past decade as a store of value. Notably, the blockchain lacked an ecosystem and was mostly detached from the decentralised finance world – until now.
The advent of Ordinals (data inscribed on BTC transactions) kicked off the BTC revolution. Now, the crypto community is anticipating Bitcoin becoming its own financial universe, filled with NFTs, scaling solutions and decentralised applications.
Related: OP_CAT Upgrade Could Elevate Bitcoin Beyond a Mere Store of Value, Adding New Features
Bitcoin Can Live Up to its Potential and Entrench Itself in DeFi
Bitcoin is well-known for being one of the slowest blockchains going around. The Mainnet, now 15 years old, can process approximately 7 transactions per second (TPS). This is a far cry from non-crypto gateways like Visa which can handle upwards of 60,000 TPS.
If Bitcoin wants to become a thriving DeFi ecosystem, its settlement time and scalability simply must improve. And esteemed crypto developers StarkWare have stepped up to the plate.
StarkWare is best known among the community for its work with the Ethereum Layer 2 protocol Starknet, which uses zero-knowledge tech to improve transaction speeds while retaining security.
The team is turning its attention to the Bitcoin blockchain, thanks to the potential reimplementation of Satoshi’s dormant OP_CAT code. StarkWare founder Eli Ben-Sasson spoke to the matter:
Starknet will become the first network to settle simultaneously on Bitcoin and Ethereum, and scale Bitcoin to many thousands of transactions per second. This will happen within six months after the potential Bitcoin upgrade, OP_CAT.
Eli Ben-SassonEssentially, the existing Starknet protocol will branch its services to Bitcoin too, avoiding the necessity for a fork. The ultimate goal is to transform the blockchain into an all-powerful ecosystem, leveraging Bitcoin’s immense security and industry stature to take Web3 to the next level.
Bitcoin today is mighty, but still a fraction of what it can be. I want to see the full works…[What] we are proposing can deliver everything Satoshi envisioned, including the cheap everyday micro-payments discussed in the Bitcoin White Paper.
Eli Ben-SassonGet the most important crypto news delivered to your inbox by subscribing to the CNA newsletter
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