Title: “A Vision for Scaling Bitcoin: Unleashing its Full Potential”
Author: Eli Ben-Sasson
Translated by: Odaily
Starknet is set to become the first network to settle transactions on both Bitcoin and Ethereum, expanding Bitcoin’s transaction processing capacity to thousands of transactions per second. This will be achieved within six months after a moderate upgrade to Bitcoin, made possible by OP_CAT. This is my proposal for the future of Starknet, as well as a recommendation for blockchain, the global economy, and our personal rights. We have taken concrete steps towards this goal, detailed as follows.
The time has finally come for STARKs to embrace new challenges. Now, STARKs will demonstrate its scalability on the most inclusive currency ever created, Bitcoin. By scalability, I mean true decentralization. I am not here to create another multi-signature sidechain, but rather to create a layer that can scale both Ethereum and Bitcoin simultaneously.
Cryptographic technology has the power to purify the digital world and the financial sector. It can bring integrity to currency, rebalance power in society, take it back from big tech companies, and return it to sovereign individuals. It is a tool that empowers humanity and grassroots communities. In short, it is a source of goodness. Therefore, we need a vision that showcases this and resonates with everyone. To pursue this vision, I bid farewell to a peaceful academic career.
Without scaling the BTC chain, this vision remains incomplete. By scaling Bitcoin, we can unleash the power of blockchain to change the world. StarkWare is actively supporting this vision through practical development and has launched a $1 million fund to support new research that reveals the benefits and drawbacks of adopting OP_CAT on Bitcoin.
Through a strategic partnership established with L2 Iterative Ventures (L2 IV) and Weikeng Chen at the ZeroSync Foundation, we have achieved fruitful results. We have pushed the boundaries in open-source work on STARK validators implemented in contracts and Bitcoin scripts based on OP-CAT, leveraging their team’s expertise in engineering and research. We also acknowledge the contributions of BitVM and the ZeroSync Foundation, who have paved the way for many to explore the possibilities of Bitcoin. Carter Feldman from QED has also provided assistance, showcasing what can be discovered by examining Taproot from new perspectives and an open mindset.
Following this article, StarkWare and Starknet will release numerous official updates. However, for now, I want to return to the basics and clarify why we are doing what we are doing.
The Fractured Year of 2008
In 2008, the global financial system collapsed. In response, Satoshi Nakamoto released the revolutionary Bitcoin whitepaper. At this fractured moment, Nakamoto showed us a different way of doing things. We, the public, could demand and enforce higher standards of integrity and transparency in the financial sector. Nakamoto introduced an inclusive protocol that invited everyone to participate and contribute, rather than relying on the fortresses and skyscrapers of traditional banks. Through Bitcoin mining and fees, this protocol distributed value fairly and transparently to a broad base of contributors. The broader the base of contributors, the better and more secure Bitcoin becomes.
Bitcoin gave us more than just a ledger—it gave us confidence in change. It achieved this precisely at a time when banks were messing up, busy repossessing houses, hoping we wouldn’t notice that despite all the mortgage institutions saying, “Trust us,” houses were no longer “absolutely safe.”
If fully realized, Bitcoin’s impact could even surpass what we see today. Its destiny should and must be as a globally adopted reserve. It can form the foundation of a global “trust network” that supports all the social functionalities our free society requires: currency, property management, and social interactions.
The Bitcoin whitepaper envisioned a network that could be used for payments, big or small, operated by everyone, regardless of wealth. Today, around 1.5 billion people in the world don’t even have a bank account. For these people, Bitcoin payments are not just an alternative, but their first exposure to financial infrastructure. The capacity offered by today’s Bitcoin is too limited, and the existing capacity is too expensive for almost everyone among these 1.5 billion people. My motivation is to develop technology that makes Bitcoin and the free society it supports accessible to everyone.
The Origin of Bitcoin
Some may think that StarkWare is an Ethereum enthusiast. While we recognize the value of Ethereum and are committed to its success, we are first and foremost enthusiasts of STARKs. Starknet, as a Layer 2 on Ethereum, is a natural extension of the functionality set of StarkWare. It aligns with the vision we have adhered to since the establishment of StarkWare, that STARKs are a public good that needs to scale for all truly decentralized blockchain projects.
Introducing ZK-STARKs to Bitcoin is not a deviation from our path but a full-circle return. Until now, all of StarkWare’s systems have been deployed solely on Ethereum. However, the idea of STARK scalability for blockchains originated from a Bitcoin conference in the spring of 2013.
At the conference, I took the stage and presented my nascent, somewhat quirky cryptography research, which later became known as STARKs. Many in the audience responded, saying that this cryptographic research was exactly what blockchain needed. In other words, I was “inspired” by Bitcoin two years before Ethereum was launched.
Thus, StarkWare has always had a deep connection with Bitcoin since its inception, and we have been observing this network with admiration. Now, I feel comfortable that with the emergence of Taproot and the potential implementation of OP_CAT, the possibilities for shaping Bitcoin have been formed.
We have also supported groundbreaking Bitcoin projects, such as ZeroSync, which was the first to integrate ZK proofs with Bitcoin to enhance privacy and scalability. StarkWare also commissioned researcher John Light to write the report “Validity Rollups on Bitcoin,” reevaluating the potential of integrating existing validity rollups with Bitcoin and concluding that there may be an ideal match. Our next-generation circle-stark prover-verifier, Stwo, works on the finite field M31. This field complements Bitcoin scripts well, making us well-suited to provide the next generation of Bitcoin scaling solutions.
The Future We Hope to See
My dream is to see Bitcoin reach the necessary scale to serve everyone. This involves open participation for all, without economic barriers. I believe this must stay true to Nakamoto’s insistence on decentralization and security.
The internet originally started as a niche place for geeky engineers and scholars to play around. Over the years, it has evolved into the infrastructure that runs our lives. Blockchain is a tool that operates on top of the internet and can democratize it by redistributing trust and integrity to sovereign individuals in large communities, rather than entrusting them to a few big companies. But true empowerment and bringing it back to the masses require scalability.
I also believe that the opportunity to scale Bitcoin should be used to advance a value that many in the Bitcoin community hold dear: privacy. The same cryptography that provides scalability to Bitcoin also provides the raw material for enhanced privacy capabilities. With time, we will see that you can have it all: your private keys, your coins, and your privacy rights.
How Do We Achieve This Goal?
StarkWare is currently taking three concrete measures to achieve Bitcoin’s scalability:
First, we will propose a new design for Starknet that makes it the first Layer 2 settlement network on both Ethereum and Bitcoin. Our team will undertake or sponsor all necessary work to transform Starknet into a self-hosted, decentralized Layer 2 with full functionality on Bitcoin while operating as a Layer 2 on Ethereum. The architectural details we are researching will be announced in the coming weeks.
Second, StarkWare will launch a $1 million fund to provide funding for Bitcoin researchers and developers studying OP_CAT and its impact. This funding will be granted to individuals and projects that genuinely support or oppose the upgrade and provide conceptual validation for OP_CAT usage. More detailed information about this fund will be announced next week.
Finally, we believe that the OP_CAT Bitcoin soft fork is the safest path for Bitcoin’s scalability, especially in achieving Stark verification and rollups. Therefore, we announce our public support for OP_CAT. OP_CAT enables trustless rollups on Bitcoin by enabling recursive contracts, which can autonomously manage and update their states, significantly increasing transaction throughput without overwhelming Bitcoin.
If you would like to discuss StarkWare’s expansion into the Bitcoin network, please reach out to us via email or join the discussion on Twitter/X.
What Can Scaling Bitcoin Unlock?
By scaling Bitcoin, we will be able to process millions of transactions per second for hundreds of millions of users, instead of the current approximately 13 transactions per second. Some of the envisioned use cases for Bitcoin after scaling include:
Simultaneous scaling of Bitcoin and Ethereum: Currently, the blockchain landscape is fragmented. You can choose “digital gold” Bitcoin for storing value, but its utility is limited. Or you can choose Ethereum, aiming to become the “world computer.” Alternatively, you can have smaller chains that interact with both of these main chains (DApps can choose one or both), which Starknet will fragmentize. It will scale both without interfering with the independent governance of either chain.
Privacy: STARKs, the cryptographic proofs to be used for scalability, inherently possess significant privacy potential that has yet to be fully realized. This potential aligns perfectly with the Bitcoin community. One side of “zero-knowledge” technology is already well understood but remains to be untangled and translated into practical solutions. Integrating private Layer 2s into the Bitcoin ecosystem using technologies like Zcash, MimbleWimble, or Noir can significantly enhance transaction privacy.
Providing financial services to the excluded: Bitcoin’s mission has always been to empower the marginalized. Around 1.5 billion people globally lack access to traditional banking services, a significant barrier to financial inclusion. Previous attempts to scale Bitcoin have not provided a solution for mass adoption. With new scaling approaches and additional tools, Bitcoin has the potential to offer an inclusive global financial system for those without bank accounts.
Financial innovation in Bitcoin: Today, Bitcoin supports digital cash payments, but modern markets require more: better self-custody options, including programmable custodial vaults, risk management and hedging tools, credit, loans, derivatives, futures contracts, etc. These require more functionality that cannot and should not be built directly on Bitcoin. However, Starknet, as a Layer 2 on Bitcoin, can provide a win-win solution: leveraging Bitcoin’s security as digital gold while bringing significant financial innovation.
Improving the user experience: Bitcoin’s original self-custody security makes it challenging to handle securely, especially from the perspective of an ordinary user. Modern Layer 2s will provide users with secure and simple self-custody interactions to meet most of their daily needs while relying on the strong but cumbersome security of Layer 1 Bitcoin as a long-term store of value.
Why Choose STARKs and Starknet?
In simple terms, STARKs offer the largest scale, most battle-tested, and most secure form of “toxic waste” that doesn’t require trusted setups, external cryptographic primitives, or even security against post-quantum computing. Our new STARK prover-verifier, named Stwo, utilizes tiny numbers suitable for the Bitcoin stack, improving efficiency.
Starknet already has a vibrant developer community on Ethereum and a programming language, Cairo, that enables full functionality. For any developer familiar with Rust, Cairo, the native (and open-source) language of Starknet, will be very familiar. The Bitcoin community currently lacks an obvious high-level language for building on-chain activities. I hope Cairo can fill this gap and become one of the native languages of Bitcoin.
Conclusion
This is a global initiative, and we want to hear global feedback. If you have any ideas, please reach out to our team via email or Twitter/X.
