StarkNet (10)

....POS consensus is fully achieved)

3. Participation in governance, to decide on propositions in the platform..this will increase decentralization on StarkNet

PS for one to participate in governance, one has to convert their $STRK to $vSTRK on a 1:1 basis.

Dates

StarkNet was launched on 16th November, 2021.

(16th November is my birthday 🥹)

Quoting from a source

"The alpha version of Starknet’s mainnet launched on Oct. 4, 2021...This was shortly followed by the launch of the full version of the mainnet on Nov. 16, 2021.......Network development continued with the release of the StarkGate Ethereum...

Now we will look at the main thing, and it is how StarkNet handles transactions such that it scales Ethereum. Of course a Blockchain needs a consensus mechanism, StarkNet will incorporate that, and the consensus it will incorporate is POS, but before then it makes use of Sequencers and Provers at the moment.There are key paths transactions follow.

From user → mempool → Sequencers → Provers→ Verifier Smart contract → StarkNet core Smart Contract → Ethereum Validators → Ethereum's chain of blocks

Users

A user sends some ETH to a friend.

This transaction is submitted to the sequencer via the mempool.

mempool refers to an assembly of non-validated transactions waiting to be validated or invalidated

Worthy of note is the fact that sequencers make use of nodes (computers) that are more powerful than Ethereum's validator's nodes...so they can process and validate more transactions in real time.

Valid transactions move on, while invalid ones are removed.

Valid transactions (trxs) are grouped into blocks and sealed, and sent to other sequencers. By consensus, sequencers vote on valid trxs before the valid trxs will be sent to the Provers.

The bulk of the work happens at the Provers side.

It is while the Provers are processing and executing that thousands and thousands of transactions will be compressed so that Ethereum uses very little resources in validating them.

Basically, after the sequencers validate the trxs, the Provers prove the trxs mathematically.

After sequencers reach agreement, and send forth new validated blocks to the Provers, these new blocks join a queue of fast moving blocks.

These blocks are processed in parallel by the Provers.

Processed in parallel? It's a technical way of saying that trxs are processed simultaneously...(at the same time).

During the execution, the Provers documents a State Difference and an Execution Trace.

State Difference refers to the record of how the StarkNet's state changed after the execution.

Execution Trace refers to the record of how many trxs were executed.

The next thing that Provers do is to run the Execution Trace (ET) in an algorithm which will verify it (ET) by blowing up and mixing the data from the ET.

Illustration

think of it as if one is preparing a soup. The individual is done cooking their soup, if a drop of poison, say a drop of venom from a snake, enters the soup......

...that soup will be unsafe for consumption.

This is the same idea behind the mixing and blowing up of ET's data by the algorithm in StarkNet. A single invalid trxs will contaminate the whole batch or block of trxs hence, the block proceeds no further.

However, if the blocks happen to be valid, then the algorithm will do one last thing after the process of blowing up and mixing, and that thing is that it will RANDOMLY select a certain sample of blocks which will become the PROOF.

In StarkNet, PROOF is the mathematical evidence that the trxs are valid.

Evidently, the PROOF + THE STATE DIFFERENCE...

...holds thousands of valid trxs. You see, trxs have been compressed.

Now let me make something clear.

You may have heard many Ethereum scaling solution claim to be optimistic roll-ups.

Well, StarkNet is not one of them rather it is a validity roll-up.

It uses zkSTARK.

All the processes outlined is the STARK, the ZK in the STARK refers to the fact that every process carried out from where the user submitted a trx through, the sequencers processing is geared at :

1. Of course, validating trx's validity, and...

...2. encrypting users data, such that the provers receive only information about the trx and not about user.

This is the Zero Knowledge part of zkSTARK

..after the provers are done with their job, the proof + state diff. Is sent to Ethereum mainnet as a single trx.

At this point it will be processed by two smart contracts, Ethereum Validators and then eventually added to the chain of blocks.

The first contract to process and validate the trx (made up of proof + State diff) is the Verifier Smart contract which basically unpacks the proof and validate the samples.

If there's any invalid trx, it(invalid trx) will as usual invalidate other trx's and the process of validation continues no further.

Otherwise, the validation process continues after the successful validation by the Verifier Smart contract.

The 2nd smart contract to process the Proof and state diff. is the StarkNet Core Smart contract, whose primary responsibility is to

1. confirm the proof is certain (mathematically certain)

2. Confirm that the state diff was delivered to it.

Once it confirms the state diff has been delivered, on-chain status of StarkNet will be updated.

The validated proof + confirmed State diff is bundled as a block and sent to Ethereum Network of nodes as a trx, and there by POS it is then validated finally and added immutably to Ethereum's Blockchain.

Just a hint, StarkNet utilizes a different programming language called Cairo.

Dyor ?

Epicly resourceful

Mastery

Insouciance

Brilliantly explained

Keep Broadening Your Horizon.

Thank you 🙏 if you read to this point.

If you have questions, on the first slide is a link to my LinkedIn profile.

Here's a link to my X profile too.

...onboarding and processes smooth in their platform...while StarkNet was built to accommodate any type of use case or improvision.

StarkNet has a board of committee members.

About 7 personnels...that's a tip off.

It's not really decentralized yet.

Sources affirm StarkNet will progressively decentralize in the near future.

The seven members include :

- Eli Ben-Sasson

- Uri Kolodny

- Heather Meeker

- Andrew McLaughlin

- Eric Wall

- Shubhangi Saraf

- Tomasz Stanczak

StarkNet has a CEO namely, Diego Oliva

Starkware has four Co-founders

- Uri Kolodny

- Eli Ben-Sasson

- Alessandro Chiesa

- Michael Riabzev