A system in need of reinvention
At Starknet Foundation, our vision is a world where power is shared, creativity is rewarded, and opportunity is accessible to all. As the Starknet L2 moves towards becoming the first protocol to settle on both Bitcoin and Ethereum, I thought it was important to take a moment to talk about this vision, how it has brought us here, and how we see Bitcoin helping us realize it.
The limits of the current digital world are clear: money, data, and power are concentrated in the hands of the few, limiting opportunity and participation for most, and leaving the internet as a whole a less diverse, creative, and innovative space. It was never meant to be like this. But, as with so many things, we get so used to the way things are that we often stop seeing them. That is, until they break.
The rise of digital gold
The financial crisis of 2008 was exactly this kind of breaking point. We saw with painful clarity the limits of our current financial system, the impossibility of fully trusting financial institutions, and the need to be able to be custodians of our money in a way that was accessible to everyone. Enter Bitcoin.
With Bitcoin’s launch in 2009 a new, imagined but previously unrealized, horizon opened up. We were presented with a truly global currency that required no intermediaries, no bank account, and no government intervention or regulation. It was a community driven currency open to everyone regardless of wealth, social status, or national origin.
Unfortunately, as with many young technologies, a combination of technical limitations and bad actors led Bitcoin’s adoption to remain limited early on. Slow transactions, complicated UX, and limited ways to use the token, along with its early reputation for being primarily for illicit activities, proved to be challenging hurdles for Bitcoin. So, while it remained in the popular imagination it did not reach the mainstream or its world changing potential.
The birth of the global commons
Six years after Bitcoin’s initial launch, the second major player in the blockchain space came into being. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum wasn’t meant to only be about money, it was intended to be a global commons where people could build everything from currency to identity and governance systems. It was, in a sense, a global computer, but much like Bitcoin, one that was initially held back by its own technological limitations. The UX was equally complicated, and it required learning new conceptual frameworks and programming languages.
If we fast forward to today, numerous other layer 1 blockchains, as well as layer 2s and layer 3s have arisen, but Bitcoin and Ethereum remain the largest and most important projects in the Web3 space, and in many ways the greatest hopes for bringing this world changing technology to everyone. And this is where Starknet comes in.
Web3 at scale
Although it was originally launched on Ethereum, Starknet wasn’t built only for Ethereum. Starknet was built to be able to scale any chain using STARK proofs in order to create a digital world with integrity thanks to full verifiability. The idea that this would be possible for Bitcoin as well has been there from the very beginning of the project. Now, after countless hours of research and development, we are in a place to begin making this idea a reality.
That this is now possible, and that Starknet is building the infrastructure and partnerships needed to make this happen is a massive step forward, and a reason to be excited. But what is perhaps even more exciting is what this will enable and what it can mean for the digital world as a whole.
A new foundation for the digital world
By enabling developers to create applications that only need to be built once, using the same code, but that can settle on either Bitcoin or Ethereum, we will enable greater utility for Bitcoin and continue to make Ethereum’s digital commons more accessible to everyone through faster transactions, increased scale, and lower costs. For the first time developers will have true optionality between the leading chains, and can access the strengths of both Ethereum and Bitcoin depending on the application being built.
Satoshi’s original vision was a digital peer-to-peer payment system that can operate without the need for centralized authority, at scale. Until now, only part of that was possible. By bringing STARK technology to Bitcoin, we are helping to make the full vision a reality. This can bring about a sea change in financial accessibility and inclusion, open up new markets, and create a new foundation for reimagining and reinventing the digital world from the ground up, something that resonates with both Satoshi’s vision as well as our own at Starknet Foundation.
We are on the precipice of something amazing, and Starknet is leading the way.
