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

The team behind the layer 2 Starknet blockchain said that they will also hold a code review on Aug. 31 at a conference in San Francisco.

Aug 22, 2023, 2:37 p.m.
StarkWare co-founders CEO Uri Kolodny and President Eli Ben-Sasson (Natalie Schor/StarkWare)
StarkWare co-founders CEO Uri Kolodny and President Eli Ben-Sasson (Natalie Schor/StarkWare)

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.

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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.

Read more: StarkWare to Open Source Its Ethereum Scaling System

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KuCoin Hits Record Market Share as 2025 Volumes Outpace Crypto Market

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KuCoin captured a record share of centralised exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the wider crypto market.

What to know:

  • KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
  • This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
  • Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
  • Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
  • Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.

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Solana’s new phase is ‘much more about finance,’ says Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante

Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante (CoinDesk)

The Solana ecosystem has spent the past year doubling down on a financial infrastructure, Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante told CoinDesk.

What to know:

  • Solana’s latest phase looks a lot less flashy than its memecoin-fueled highs, and that may be the goal.
  • Armani Ferrante, CEO of crypto exchange Backpack, told CoinDesk in an interview the Solana ecosystem has spent the past year doubling down on a more sober focus: financial infrastructure. A
  • fter years of experimentation as the wider crypto industry focused on NFTs, games and social tokens, attention is now shifting back toward decentralized finance, trading and payments.