Company:StarkWare Industries

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StarkWare Industries
TypePrivate company
Industryblockchain
Founded2018; 6 years ago (2018)
Founders
  • Eli Ben-Sasson
  • Uri Kolodny
  • Michael Riabzev
  • Alessandro Chiesa
Headquarters
Netanya
,
Israel
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Eli Ben-Sasson (President)
Uri Kolodny (CEO)
ProductsStarkEx, cairo, starknet
Number of employees
70
Websitestarkware.co

StarkWare Industries is an Israeli software company that specializes in cryptography. It develops zero-knowledge proof technology that compresses information to address the scalability problem of the blockchain, and works on the Ethereum platform.[1] In May 2022, the company's estimated value was $8 billion, an increase from $2 billion six months earlier.[2]

History

StarkWare Industries was founded in 2018 by Eli Ben-Sasson (President) from the Technion, one of the founders of Zcash,[3][4] his former phd. student Michael Riabzev, Uri Kolodny (CEO), and Alessandro Chiesa from UC Berkeley (chief scientist). [5] In April 2019 Technion sued Ben-Sasson and Riabazev for violating its Intellectual property[6] The institute claimed that Ben-Sasson established StarkWare clandestinely, for his academic research without consent and demand 50% of his stake in the company. Ben-Sasson claimed that he didn't use any invention belonging to the Technion, merely based on StarkWares’ employees' knowledge.[7] In 2020 the two sides reached an agreement and Ben-Sasson left the Technion.[5][8]

Starkware raised $6 million in seed money and afterward $30 million in series A round led by Paradigm, VC fund by Fred Ehrsam.[9] Other participants were Intel Capital, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase and Vitalik Buterin.[10] In March 2021 the company raised $75 million in series B round. It was led by Paradigm, along with other VCs such as Sequoia, DCVC, Pantera Capital, Wing, Alameda Research, and Founders Fund. In addition it received $12 million from the Ethereum Foundation.[5] In November 2021 StarkWare raised $50 million in a Series C round led by Sequoia, making its total raised money to $163 million and bringing its value to $2 billion, making it a Unicorn.[11] In May 2022 StarkWare raised 100 million in a Series D round led by Greenoaks Capital and Coatue Management,[12] bringing its value to $8 billion. Series D was carried out despite a bear market.[2]

Starkware's scientific advisors include: Avi Wigderson, Shafi Goldwasser, Noam Nisan and Madhu Sudan. The company's advisors Include: Balaji Srinivasan, Joseph Lubin, Naval Ravikant, and Tom Glocer.[13] The company employs 70 people [14] and located in Netanya.[10] [15]

Technology

Starkware develops technology called STARK (scalable transparent ARgument of knowledge) to improve the scalability in the blockchain.[7] It was founded on the basis of a theoretical research conducted by Ben-Sasson and Riabzev and others at the Technion in addition to mathematical models of zero knowledge proofs (ZKP).[8][16] The company develops technology based on this math to batch thousands transactions in a single batch, away from the basis layer of Ethereum. Each final update of each batch is written to Ethereum using a file of 80 kilobytes, which acts as a proof for the content in the batch.[2] This compression process increases the amount of data that can be accepted on a block of the blockchain and minimizes the energy needed for each transaction.[17] The energy consumption per transaction reduces by 200,000 times.[18]

StarkWare first offered its technology in the form of StarkEx, a proprietary scaling engine which was launched on Ethereum in June 2020.[11] It is used by Sorare,[14] Dydx,[19] Immutable X,[20] the web browser Opera,[21] and DeversiFi.[8][2] In June 2021 StarkWare launched its second platform: StarkNet. Unlike StarkEx, which is available to clients, StarkNet is permissionless. Any developer can use it to build on it their scalable decentralized applications.[8] As of May 2022 there had been 100,000 downloads of developer tools to build on StarkNet.[2] StarkWare's systems are programmed in the CAIRO language, Turing complete programming language which was built by researchers and engineers from the company.[14]

See also

  • List of unicorn startup companies
  • Science and technology in Israel
  • Silicon Wadi

References

  1. ↑ Mohammed, Kiran Mathur (29 July 2021). "Eli Ben-Sasson develops technology to make blockchain 20,000 times cheaper" (in en-US). Trinidad and Tobago Newsday. https://newsday.co.tt/2021/07/29/eli-ben-sasson-develops-technology-to-make-blockchain-20000-times-cheaper/,%2520https://newsday.co.tt/2021/07/29/eli-ben-sasson-develops-technology-to-make-blockchain-20000-times-cheaper/. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Bambysheva, Nina (May 25, 2022). "Ethereum Scaling Company StarkWare Quadruples Valuation To $8 Billion Amid Bear Market" (in en). https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2022/05/25/ethereum-scaling-company-starkware-quadruples-valuation-to-8-billion-amid-bear-market/. 
  3. ↑ "Founding Zcash scientists" (in en-US). Zcash. https://z.cash/founding-scientists/. 
  4. ↑ Sasson, EB; Chiesa, A; Garman, C; Green, M; Miers, I; Tromer, E; Virza, M (2014). "Zerocash: Decentralized anonymous payments from bitcoin". 2014 IEEE symposium on security and privacy. pp. 459–474. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=M93Auk4AAAAJ&citation_for_view=M93Auk4AAAAJ:0KyAp5RtaNEC. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Dor, Ofir (25 March 2021). "Blockchain scalability co Starkware raises $75m". Globes. https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-%D7%A0lockchain-scalability-co-%D7%93tarkware-raises-75m-1001365465. 
  6. ↑ "סע"ש 23228-04-19: הטכניון - מכון טכנולוגי לישראל ואח' נ' בן ששון ואח' תולעת המשפט". https://תולעת-המשפט.קום/%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A7/23228-04-19. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Dobrovitsky, Lital (22 April 2019). "Technion Suing Senior Professor for 50% of His Company Stake". https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3760876,00.html. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Amitai Ziv. "Caring for Your CryptoKitties Has Never Been Easier, Thanks to These Israelis" (in en). Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-11-23/ty-article/.premium/feeding-your-crypto-cats-was-never-so-easy-thanks-to-this-israeli-company/0000017f-dbeb-d856-a37f-ffeb382b0000. 
  9. ↑ "Intel Capital, Sequoia Back Blockchain Startup StarkWare in $30 Million Round". 29 October 2018. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3748695,00.html. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Sinai, Allon (18 January 2021). "The Bitcoin bull is raging and StarkWare aims to ensure blockchain follows suit". https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3888353,00.html. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "StarkWare joins Israeli unicorn club with $50 million Series C at $2 billion valuation". 16 November 2021. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3922719,00.html. 
  12. ↑ Scheer, Steven (25 May 2022). "Blockchain tech firm StarkWare raises $100 mln, valued at $8 bln". Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/markets/wealth/blockchain-tech-firm-starkware-raises-100-mln-valued-8-bln-2022-05-25/. 
  13. ↑ "About Us" (in en-US). https://starkware.co/about-us/. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Meir Orbach (10 March 2022). "StarkWare set to hit $6 billion valuation in new funding round" (in en). https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rjm00s7wbq. 
  15. ↑ Peter, Alex. "Blockchain development services". https://interexy.com/blockchain-app-development-services/. 
  16. ↑ Ben-Sasson, Eli; Bentov, Iddo; Horesh, Yinon; Riabzev, Michael (2019). Scalable Zero Knowledge with No Trusted Setup. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 11694. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 701–732. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-26954-8_23. ISBN 978-3-030-26953-1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26954-8_23. Retrieved 7 January 2023. 
  17. ↑ Raisa Bruner (November 18, 2021). "Are Environmentally-Friendly NFTs Possible?" (in en). Time. https://time.com/6120237/nfts-environmental-impact/. Retrieved 7 January 2023. 
  18. ↑ Noga Martin (May 27, 2022). "Israeli Fintech Startup Achieves Level 8 Unicorn Status". https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/05/27/israeli-fintech-startup-achieves-level-8-unicorn-status/. 
  19. ↑ Kauflin, Jeff (October 15, 2021). "How A 19-Person Cryptocurrency Startup Surpassed Coinbase In Daily Trading Volume" (in en). https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/10/15/how-a-19-person-cryptocurrency-exchange-surpassed-coinbase-in-daily-trading-volume/. 
  20. ↑ Takahashi, Dean (14 September 2021). "Immutable raises $60M for NFT games platform on Ethereum" (in en-US). https://venturebeat.com/games/immutable-raises-60m-for-nft-games-platform-on-ethereum/. 
  21. ↑ "Opera Integrates Ethereum Layer 2, bringing access to DeFi to Millions of Users" (Press release). PR Newswire. February 23, 2022. Retrieved 7 January 2023.



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