Ethereum (ETH) Layer 2 developer StarkWare has raised one other $100 million in its newest funding spherical regardless of the prevailing downturn in cryptocurrency markets.
StarkWare’s Collection D funding spherical sees the corporate’s valuation at as much as $8 billion, a fourfold enhance in worth simply six months after its Collection C funding spherical in November 2021.
StarkWare has established itself as a significant participant within the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling house, boasting a better transaction throughput than the Bitcoin community in 2022 and all different Layer 2 platforms general.
The corporate makes use of rollup expertise for its Ethereum Layer 2 scaling platforms. By producing proofs of validity, generally recognized within the business as zero-knowledge proofs, StarWare says it has the power so as to add huge quantities of transactions to Ethereum’s mainnet.
Co-founder and President Eli Ben-Sasson, together with different laptop scientists, pioneered ZK-STARK cryptography. Zero-Data Scalable Clear Arguments of Data is a proof system that makes use of new-age cryptography to encrypt and confirm transaction knowledge – guaranteeing safety, scalability and resilience to quantum computing.
The expertise underlying StarkWare’s two platforms, StarkEx and StarkNet, has confirmed fashionable. StarkEx is the scaling engine utilized by the favored non-fungible marketplaces Sorare, ImmutableX and dYdX, whereas StarkNet is a decentralized software improvement community.
Talking to Cointelegraph, Uri Kolodny, co-founder and CEO of Ben-Sasson and StarkWare, offered the newest spherical of funding, which was fueled by outdoors investor demand for the long-term potential of Layer 2 expertise.
“We consider we’re on a protracted, difficult and demanding mission to invent and develop applied sciences that haven’t existed earlier than and convey them to market as a software program product providing with an ecosystem round it. All of this requires vital sources so we will give attention to the long-term,” Kolodyny informed Cointelegraph.
StarkWare will leverage its latest $100 million funding spherical broadly to develop its ecosystem across the software program instruments it creates. Ben-Sasson additionally famous that StarkEx’s capabilities are a significant draw for traders, which is able to preserve the platform a spotlight for the corporate:
“Investor scores should be based mostly on confirmed, examined metrics, and the present metrics are all sourced from StarkEx. We’ve got minted extra NFTs than another platform, we course of extra transactions than Bitcoin at present and there have been weeks after we processed greater than Ethereum.”
StarkWare’s president stated these metrics are mirrored within the firm’s $8 billion valuation and that his purpose is to construct on the previous success of StarkEx whereas hoping StarkNet continues to draw builders.
Associated: MakerDAO makes use of StarkNet on the Layer 2 community to boost the capabilities of DAI stablecoin
Ben-Sasson admitted that the power of the underlying expertise to achieve its present scalability and past was not shocking given the mathematical principle behind it. Nonetheless, credit score has been given to the ecosystem that StarkEx has taken over:
“What’s pleasantly shocking and deserves a lot credit score for the ecosystem and our preliminary companions Diversify, dYdX, Sorare and ImmutableX is the power to undertake this core expertise that means that you can keep the integrity of computation at scale and full it convey customers into such a profitable and efficient mansion.”
The present downturn in broader cryptocurrency markets has been a trigger for concern, however StarkWare co-founders consider their fundraising efforts are signaling to the broader ecosystem that savvy traders see a silver lining regardless of the awful outlook.