Rolling up the calendar

A brief recap of our accomplishments in 2023

tl;dr

• Q1 and infra improvements 

• Quantum leap and the new stack 

• Starknet Foundation, and associated changes

• The on-chain gaming revolution, amongst others

Chapter 1 - Setting the Stage

2023 was all about making Starknet - Ethereum’s first validity rollup - more efficient and intuitive to use. And we started this journey in style - by presenting our first batch of upgrades at the awesome “StarkWare Sessions” in Tel Aviv. 

At a glance, this conference featured the following - 

• A new, typesafe Rust like syntax for Cairo dubbed Cairo 1.0

• A performant Rust-based Starknet Full Node named Papyrus

• A totally revamped, blazing fast, open source Starknet Sequencer

These developments would go on to lay the groundwork for bigger changes in the coming months. 

Moreover, the conference signaled StarkWare’s intention to fully open-source its tech stack. It also gave the audience hope of a more decentralized and censorship-resistant network by the end of the year.

Chapter 2 - Making the Leap

After setting up the basic plumbing, we raced to improve performance and make the network competitive with our peers. This attracted many web3 developers to our network, each trying to outdo the other in avenues such as on-chain gaming, DeFi, NFTs, ZKML etc. 

The media dubbed this phase Starknet’s “quantum leap” and the world got to see the new tech stack in action with Paradex - our first ever Starknet Appchain. Moreover, other really cool projects gained steam, such as -

• Madara: An open source app-chain framework 

• Herodotus: A new proving mechanism using storage proofs 

• StOne: An open source STARK prover/verifier engine 

All of these changes, and more were brought forth and presented to leading academics and developers at the Stanford Science of Blockchain (SBC) conference in August. 

Chapter 3 - A Surprise Entry

As the network matured, it became more important than ever for it to stand on its own feet. The Starknet Foundation made its first official appearance amid great cheer, at the Starknet Summit in San Francisco. 

The foundation introduced several efforts community, including

• Five mission-specific committees 

• A mentorship program for Starknet builders

• A new, global approach to Developer Advocacy 

• Efforts to manage the allocate the native STARK Token

The foundation hosted its first line-up of exciting events at the much awaited Eth DevCon in Istanbul, with over 450 participants sharing their ideas, excitement and building dozens of exciting new projects. 

Chapter 4 - Opening the Floodgates

With enhanced performance, usability and a new push for community engagement - Starknet was now ready for it’s first cambrian explosion. And it came in the form of, well, quite a few things …

• A boom in highly engaging on-chain games 

• Several projects in provable machine learning 

• A new PoS testnet, deprecating the Goerli testnet

• Features for $STRK native fees, and volition mode

• A roadmap for decentralizing the sequencer and prover 

We are incredibly excited to see these new ideas take shape and turn into 

In order to promote this surge in innovation. Meanwhile  the Starknet Foundation also announced the “Devonomics Program”. 

Events Around the World

As always, we strive to bring an in person element to our fast growing blockchain community. Feel free to choose from any of these amazing meetups happening in a city near you -

• STARKSeattle: Jan 14 | RSVP

• Online Basecamp: Jan 11 - Feb 01 | RSVP

• Bay Area Meetup: Jan 21 | Upcoming

• ETH + STARK Denver: Feb 23 - March 3 | Upcoming

Summary

We can’t thank you enough for being a part of this amazing journey with us through 2023. We are incredibly grateful for all your suggestions, community engagement and contributions to our open source repositories.

Finally, we are excited to catch you in person at various events happening around the world and with you a happy new year !