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Zero-knowledge (ZK)-Rollup tech company StarkWare has officially open-sourced its new programming language compiler, Cairo 1.0, which will soon be supported on Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution StarkNet in Q1 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The news was announced<\/a> by StarkWare \u2014 the company behind StarkNet \u2014 in a Nov. 25 Twitter post. StarkWare\u2019s roll-up technology and recursive proofs offer the potential to compress millions of transactions on L2 into a single transaction on Ethereum. However, the project has been criticized for maintaining control over its IP, not least of all by its more open source-focused competitor zkSync.<\/p>\n StarkWare described open-sourcing Cairo as a \u201cmilestone move\u201d in its quest to hand over more control and intellectual property rights <\/a>to its community and developers. Cairo is a programming language written specifically to harness the power of zk-Rollups and validity proofs.<\/p>\n The day has come: a first look into Cairo 1.0, fully open-source <\/p>\n This is a big step towards open-sourcing the StarkNet stack<\/p>\n You can now get familiar with the new syntax, compile and run simple programs locally. #StarkNet<\/a> support is coming soonhttps:\/\/t.co\/0tdZDhopEP<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 StarkWare (@StarkWareLtd) November 24, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n StarkWare stated that developers can now experiment with Cairo 1.0 by compiling and executing simple applications until it is fully supported on StarkNet in Q1 2023.<\/p>\n At that point, Cairo 1.0 will enable faster feature development and allow for more community involvement, according to Starkware Exploration Lead and former Ethereum core developer Abdelhamid Bakhta.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re continuing to open source the StarkNet tech stack, beginning with Cairo 1.0. We\u2019re doing this in order to fulfill StarkNet’s vision as a public good that anyone can use, and that the community can constantly improve,\u201d he said:<\/p>\n \u201cOn a practical level this maximizes transparency about our code, and our coding process. And it strengthens the community\u2019s ability to find bugs and improve the compiler. With each aspect of the tech stack that is open sourced, this sense of community involvement will grow and grow.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Once in production, Cairo 1.0 will also enable blockchain developers to write and deploy smart contracts to StarkNet, according<\/a> to StarkWare\u2019s Medium post. <\/p>\n StarkWare added that because Cairo 1.0 makes every computation \u201cprovable,\u201d StarkNet\u2019s censorship resistance properties will be strengthened and it\u2019ll also be better positioned to respond to denial-of-service attacks.<\/p>\n StarkWare\u2019s STARK tech stack powers a number of Web3 projects including decentralized exchange (DEX)<\/a> platform dYdX (although this is moving to its own chain on Cosmos), nonfungible token (NFT) platform Immutable X and blockchain interoperability protocol Celer Network.<\/p>\n Related: <\/em><\/strong>60 million NFTs could be minted in a single transaction \u2014 StarkWare co-founder<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n StarkNet has taken a gamble by using Cairo to speed up its solution, which is not natively compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). However, Ethereum software tooling firm Nethermind built a transpiler called Warp<\/a> that converts Solidity code into Cairo code. <\/p>\n Competitor zkSync\u2019s EVM-compatible mainnet is in the process of being launched.<\/p>\n But, despite taking a more difficult path, StarkWare founder Eli Ben-Sasson recently told Cointelegraph that using custom-built programming language like Cairo, as opposed to Solidity, was the only viable way to take full advantage of Ethereum scaling afforded by zk-Rollups:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m willing to bet that you won\u2019t see a full blown ZK EVM that can put a million transactions inside a single proof on Ethereum. As we can easily do today and have been doing for months and years.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The news comes as Starkware also recently deployed<\/a> the new StarkNet token (STRK) on Ethereum on Nov. 17, which will be used for staking and voting purposes in addition to paying fees on the network. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n