Starkware to Open-Source ‘Magic Wand’ of Its Zero-Knowledge Cryptography Next Week

Starkware, the company behind the Ethereum layer 2 blockchain StarkNet, said in a press release that they will be open-sourcing their cryptographic software tool, STARK Prover, which has been renamed as Stone, on Aug. 31.

The company is known for its “zero-knowledge” proofs, a type of cryptographic technology that’s now being used by several competing projects to scale the Ethereum blockchain, with the goal of increasing transaction throughput and reducing fees.

The STARK Prover is a key component for the tech, and has been referred to in the past by the project team as its “magic wand” – responsible for compressing transactions and creating cryptographic proofs.

According to Starkware, open-sourcing the prover will “allow more eyes to review the code and offer optimizations, improve its quality, help detect bugs and provide transparency.”

Starkware had previously announced in February that it had plans to open-source its prover, at a Starkware Session event in Tel Aviv. On Aug. 31, the code will be made available during a Starknet Summit session.

“This is a major step forward in the decentralization of StarkWare’s technology that enables the community to build upon and contribute to the Prover’s development independently,” Starkware said in a blog post.

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Margaux Nijkerk

Margaux Nijkerk reports on the Ethereum protocol and L2s. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a small amount of ETH and other altcoins.

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