Key Takeaways
- StarkWare has raised one other $100 million, valuing the corporate at $8 billion.
- StarkWare CEO Uri Kolodny has said that the increase alerts robust help for the corporate’s Layer 2 know-how regardless of the present market downturn.
- StarkWare is one among a number of firms working to scale Ethereum utilizing Zero-Data Rollups.
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The Ethereum Layer 2 developer has quadrupled its earlier $2 billion valuation.
StarkWare Lands One other $100M in Funding
Capital is flooding into the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem.
StarkWare, one among solely a handful of firms engaged on scaling Ethereum utilizing Zero-Data Rollups, introduced it had raised one other $100 million Wednesday, bringing the corporate’s valuation to $8 billion.
The Sequence D funding spherical comes six months after the Tel Aviv-based agency closed a $50 million Sequence C increase at a $2 billion valuation. Greenoaks Capital and Coatue led the increase, whereas crypto investing titan Tiger International additionally participated alongside a bunch of different traders.
“It is a vote of confidence for the tech stack we’ve constructed, which makes blockchain scalable for mass use, and cuts transaction charges incurred by customers,” mentioned StarkWare co-founder and CEO Uri Kolodny. “We’re inspired that VCs are signaling their robust help, even within the midst of a bear market,” he mentioned.
StarkWare makes use of its personal sort of Zero-Data Rollups known as scalable clear arguments of data—in any other case often called STARKs. With STARKs, StarkWare can create a second layer on high of Ethereum the place transactions are “rolled up” collectively and despatched again to mainnet for affirmation. STARKs inherit the safety and decentralization of Ethereum mainnet whereas decreasing fuel charges by many orders of magnitude and providing near-instant transaction finality.
StarkWare’s StarkEx product routinely handles greater than 250,000 transactions each day, serving to functions equivalent to dYdX, Sorare, and Immutable X harness the safety of Ethereum for a fraction of what they must pay on mainnet. The corporate can also be engaged on a extra normal scaling answer known as StarkNet. Whereas StarkEx is application-specific, StarkNet is a totally interoperable Layer 2 the place any developer can begin constructing and deploying crypto apps.
StarkWare isn’t the one Layer 2 venture to make headlines in latest weeks. Optimism, an Optimistic Rollup-based Layer 2 community, introduced the launch of its OP token in April and is about to distribute it to early customers via an airdrop. Whereas different Ethereum scaling options equivalent to zkSync have additionally confirmed plans to decentralize their networks via token choices, StarkWare is but to substantiate or deny plans to situation a token.
Disclosure: On the time of penning this piece, the creator owned ETH and a number of other different cryptocurrencies.
