Saad Ullah
Today StarkWare announced that it is almost ready to submit the pre-audit code of their zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) for Ethereum. ZKP can substantially increase Ethereum’s scalability.
TPS race is not over yet
ZKP can offload all the computational load from Ethereum. This increases applications’ speed, as they do heavy lifting off-chain with proof that the work was actually done.
StarkWare is focused primarily on ZKPs. It was already working with 0x on making the exchange faster. The company also has a payment solution, which would come in handy in blockchain vs traditional payment systems battle.
StarkWare received a grant from Ethereum Foundation to develop ZKP for Ethereum back in 2018. At the time, sharding was a trending topic along with the transition to Ethereum 2.0. The team claimed that ZKP would enable sharding.
Two years later, Ethereum 2.0 went through multiple delays, but the team is still dedicated to delivering it. It might be that the work submitted by StarkWare will accelerate the process.
Ethereum’s better scalability is a significant issue for its competitors. Many of Layer 1 blockchains built their unique selling propositions around the low speed of Ethereum. Still, Ethereum still has the largest user base in the space and its main drawback may be fixed soon.
The market prices optimism in
The optimistic outlook finds its way into the price action. The price in ETH/BTC pairs has been moving up from mid-May, 2020.
Moreover, the network’s activity has been in a steady uptrend from the beginning of the year. This may be a result of the expansion in DeFi.
While Ethereum has been going through tough times and facing delays, it still has strong community support. With long-awaited technological updates starting to materialize, the positive outlook pushes the market up. If the trend continues, Ethereum will be back into the spotlight in no time.
Saad Ullah
