Exclusive Interview with StarkWare's Founder: Without a Token, You Can't Build a Community; Crypto Twitter Is Both a Source of Value and Noise
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Exclusive Interview with StarkWare's Founder: Without a Token, You Can't Build a Community; Crypto Twitter Is Both a Source of Value and Noise
StarkWare has developed a complete solution using STARK technology to generate and verify proofs of computational integrity through zk-Rollups and Validium schemes, collectively forming Volition.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsSource: Delphidigital Podcast
Podcast transcript by: Alex Zhang
1. Founders' Background
About Uri
Over 20 years of entrepreneurship experience
Has known Eli for a long time
Co-founded StarkWare with Eli in 2017
About Eli
Started researching the technology behind StarkWare in 2001
Transitioned from academia to blockchain in 2013
Served as founding scientist at Zcash in 2015
2. About StarkWare
Imagine blockchain as a very slow computer that everyone wants to use—due to congestion, it's slow and expensive
Instead of having the computer execute transactions directly, have it verify STARK proofs
(1) Remarkably, these proofs are orders of magnitude smaller for the computer to process
(2) This allows the slow computer to securely process thousands of transactions in seconds—accelerating blockchain operations by 10x to 100x
A key outcome of this project is abstracting away deep technical stacks through an easy-to-use, program, and deploy interface.
3. Coding with Cairo
Understanding the verification system is harder than learning Cairo
Over time, Cairo has become increasingly powerful, sophisticated, and user-friendly
A team led by Greg Vardy is building Warp—a translation layer from Solidity to Cairo
(1) Developers can freely choose their preferred tools.
Crucially, migrating code from L1 to L2 isn't about syntax
(1) Solidity on L1 was written under Ethereum's per-block gas limits
Moving to L2 with identical constraints makes little sense
(1) Don't simply replicate L1 logic and convert it to Cairo
(2) Instead, start fresh from a blank slate
(3) Dydx did exactly this on StarkEx, transforming into a fundamentally more scalable, complex, and capital-efficient financial instrument
4. Transaction Costs
Some data from Ethereum mainnet
(1) Sorare and Immutable minted 60,000 NFTs under the Validium data availability model, costing less than 10 gas per mint
(2) This is 20,000 times cheaper than on mainnet
Basic economies of scale when building on Cairo
(1) SHARP is a shared prover that verifies proofs far more cheaply than competitive off-chain provers
(2) Strong incentives exist to create massive proofs for huge computations, allowing multiple applications to share a single proof without needing synchronization
(3) Immutable, Sorare, and DeversiFi share gas costs on L1
From today onward, any new application's first proof benefits from the marginal cost across the entire Cairo ecosystem—an extremely powerful network effect
5. Speed of Running DApps
Currently, there's an open compilation environment on the StarkEx front-end, accessible to anyone via extensive documentation
(1) Sorare onboarded with fewer than 1.5 engineers in under two months
Developing on StarkNet front-end is relatively easy
(1) The beauty of permissionless innovation shines here—a highly talented individual named guiltygyoza, who had no prior knowledge of Cairo just weeks ago, is now proving physics simulations
(2) The StarkNet JS framework currently has 100 downloads and 3 contributors
6. StarkWare vs Optimistic Rollups
Optimistic rollups face inherent theoretical limitations preventing them from achieving the scalability of ZK-rollups
(1) This is purely mathematical
(2) Reddit is launching on Arbitrum, but meeting its demand may prove extremely challenging
ZK also fulfills societal privacy needs
(1) We need ownership of our own data—not "big data consumption armies" or governments
ZK technology will see broader applications in potential CBDCs, government systems, social platforms, healthcare, and beyond
The one-week withdrawal period in OP rollups affects capital efficiency—a disadvantage that shouldn't be dismissed
Someone must pay for this, and ultimately it becomes a cost borne by end users
7. Building Platforms Based on StarkWare
Immutable is a strong example of software stack performance scaling
(1) TikTok minted their first NFT within 12 days, which later auctioned for $100,000
StarkNet is an ecosystem requiring collective effort to build
(2) Two full nodes, a block explorer, auditing functions, and API services are all operated by different teams
8. What Does a Successful Project Look Like?
What will be considered successful one year from now is unpredictable
Computation volume is the most important metric to track
(1) Computation volume, latency, proof usage
(2) TPS already far exceeds Bitcoin and Ethereum while consuming only a fraction of Ethereum's gas bandwidth
9. Data Availability
Data availability exists along a spectrum
(1) At one end: Rollup mode—on-chain data, most secure but most expensive
(2) At the other end: Validium mode—off-chain data, matching current commitments to the system's new state plus validator set signatures per batch
Interestingly, some users delay choosing until the last moment
(1) Indicates genuine consideration, trade-offs, and cost calculations
This led to designing something called Volition
(1) Shifts decision-making from applications to individual users
(2) If you have a highly valuable NFT, you may prefer on-chain security despite higher tax costs
(3) Flexibility to move transactions on/off chain depends on specific use cases and needs
10. Transaction Cost: Validium vs ZK Rollup
Balancing security, Validium transactions should theoretically be cheaper than ZK rollups
(1) Though recent Dydx data shows otherwise, the theory still holds
Two combined factors explain this anomaly:
First: Dydx operates in ZK-rollup mode with larger batch processing
(1) Amortized gas costs decrease as batch size increases
Second: A small number of accounts generate most activity on Dydx
(1) In validity rollups (unlike optimistic rollups), rollup data consists only of final state differences
(2) When a small subset of accounts conducts all transactions, state differences become minimal
11. Comments on StarkWare
The most important comment: at its core, cryptography is faith-based
(1) The strength and hardness of hashes are based on faith and accumulated experience, not mathematical proof
(2) Historically speaking, this is very new territory
(3) Nearly $1 billion locked in public bounty programs—boosts confidence significantly
(4) StarkWare's cryptography is leaner and more practical compared to other zero-knowledge proof systems
Other comments:
(1) You need to build with StarkWare / understand the technology—adopt Cairo and StarkNet
(2) StarkWare is a private company—but StarkNet features decentralization, with anyone able to run provers and sequencers
(3) How do you know Stark is sound from cryptographic/code perspective? Achieved through additional audit measures via collaboration with multiple teams
12. Will StarkWare Have a Token?
Question: What's your view on building communities without tokens?
Eli: Regarding tokens, I'd say you cannot build a community without one. StarkNet will launch on Ethereum mainnet within a month, but there won't be a token during this initial month.
Based on what we're seeing now, we're optimistic about adoption, but let's revisit this in another three or four months to see how things progress.
13. DeFi Pools
DeFi pools allow users to exist on L2 while DeFi remains on L1 where it originated, with many exciting developments underway
(1) Think of it as a shuttle service
(2) Bringing individual L1 transactions that represent large groups of users
(3) Returning to L2, yields are distributed accordingly
DeFi pools are a powerful concept solving the major constraint of L1 gas fees for retail users
(1) Currently, L1 market dynamics favor whales
(2) Exciting because DeFi pools protect L1 transaction participants
14. Traditional Game Franchises
Conservatism acts as a barrier—many gaming companies show interest but worry about regulatory and compliance issues
Game studios don't clearly understand the implications of introducing games into open economies
(1) These franchises are currently highly profitable
(2) Such a transition would impact wealth distribution, user demands, game mechanics, etc.
(3) Groundbreaking innovations are likely to come from new teams building new things
Once young people see what succeeds, they will follow.
15. Best Advice from the Founders
(1) For academics wanting to commercialize, find someone to code your theoretical work—transform ideas from paper into practical applications
(2) Choose excellent co-founders and teammates
(3) Crypto Twitter is a massive source of value, but also a massive source of noise
(4) Young founders should have highly innovative ideas and focus on building and scaling a strong team
TechFlow is a deep-content platform focused on alternative asset investment. Follow our official account for more insights, or add WeChat TechFlow01 to join the TechFlow community and participate in discussions.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
