StarkWare Unveils Stwo Prover

StarkWare, a pivotal figure in blockchain scalability solutions, has made a groundbreaking announcement at Eth Denver, revealing their latest innovation: Stwo, a zero-knowledge prover. This new development is aimed at drastically reducing both latency and transaction costs, signalling a significant leap forward in blockchain technology efficiency.

Oren Katz, StarkWare’s Chief Operating Officer, elaborated on the open-source nature of Stwo, which will be released under the Apache 2.0 license. This strategic decision democratizes the technology, allowing anyone to fork, modify, and distribute the software, thus fostering a community-driven approach to its evolution and application. Katz’s vision for Stwo is not just as a tool but as a harbinger of new scaling possibilities, accessible to all from the outset.

Zero-knowledge provers, the technology underpinning Stwo, play a crucial role in blockchain’s functionality. They allow for the verification of information’s accuracy without disclosing the data itself, through the creation and verification of “proofs.” This feature is essential for maintaining privacy and security within blockchain networks.

Stwo is not StarkWare’s first foray into open-source provers. Its existing infrastructure, including the public Starknet blockchain and Starknet app chains, currently utilizes the Stone Prover, StarkWare’s inaugural prover.

However, Stwo is poised to surpass Stone in both efficiency and capability, thanks to the innovative Circle Stark protocol developed in collaboration with Polygon.

The Circle Stark protocol, and by extension Stwo, addresses and overcomes the limitations inherent in the classic STARK protocol, particularly those affecting the use of STARK for smaller fields. This breakthrough is expected to enhance the efficiency of STARKs, which are vital for attesting to the validity of specific states on zero-knowledge blockchains.

StarkWare’s introduction of Stwo represents a significant evolution in the realm of blockchain scalability solutions. By leveraging the Circle Stark protocol, Stwo not only surpasses its predecessor, Stone, in efficiency but also embodies StarkWare’s commitment to open-source development.