Komunita Starknetu podpořila výzkum přechodu na nezávislý postkvantový blockchain L1 93,52 % hlasovací síly. Starknet zatím zůstane řešením druhé vrstvy Etherea; samotný přechod vyžaduje závazné hlasování.
Starknet’s community has voted to support research into becoming an independent, post-quantum layer-1 blockchain.
The network’s potential departure from Ethereum gained overwhelming support. The governance vote that ran for seven days closed on Thursday. The poll drew about 3,200 votes, with 93.52% of voting power in favor of the transition.
The non-binding poll recorded the highest participation in Starknet’s governance history, according to StarkWare, which said it abstained from voting to leave the decision to the community.
The outcome allows StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation to proceed with research into an independent L1. The actual shift itself would require a separate, binding governance vote. For now, Starknet will continue operating as an Ethereum layer-2 network.
“We’re beginning work on a whitepaper even before we start the weekend, and hope to release a draft for public scrutiny in November,” StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson told Cointelegraph.
Starknet outlines next steps for post-quantum L1 researchStarkWare and the Starknet Foundation have established a working group to examine the proposed transition and develop more detailed technical proposals.
The governance proposal states that STRK will remain the network’s native token, with no new token planned, while existing bridges between Starknet and Ethereum will remain open.
StarkWare first raised the potential transition on Oct. 8, citing concerns about the network’s dependence on Ethereum for security. Although Starknet uses hash-based STARK proofs and supports programmable accounts capable of adopting post-quantum signatures, its bridge and data availability infrastructure remain dependent on Ethereum’s upgrade timeline.
In June, StarkWare unveiled a three-phase quantum-resistance roadmap covering cryptographic upgrades, smart-contract migration and Ethereum-dependent infrastructure.
StarkWare’s Quantum Hub says it has already tested technology designed to withstand future quantum attacks, successfully processing a transaction on Starknet’s live network. However, the technology remains experimental and has not yet undergone a security audit.
Ben-Sasson has set a 2027 target for making Starknet quantum-resistant, ahead of Ethereum’s projected timeline.
“Ethereum’s target of 2029 to become quantum-safe is too late, and deadlines slip,” he said.
Magazine: 5 alternatives to Ledger to store your Bitcoin
Decentralizovaná burza perpetual kontraktů Extended zahájí 22. října 2026 migraci ze Starknetu na síť Arc od společnosti Circle; vklady a výběry budou až na dvě hodiny pozastaveny.
Extended, a decentralized perpetuals exchange, is packing up its settlement layer and moving from Starknet to Arc, the Layer 1 blockchain developed by Circle. The migration is scheduled to begin on October 22, 2026, at 13:00 UTC.
What changes, and what doesn’t
Extended says trading will run without interruption throughout the migration. Deposits and withdrawals will pause for up to two hours while the move takes place.
For most users, no action is required. The exchange expects the majority of participants to wake up on the other side of the migration with balances intact and positions untouched.
USDT and wBTC will not be supported on Arc. Users holding either asset have two options before the October 21, 2026, deadline. They can convert USDT into USDC and wBTC into cirBTC at a 1:1 ratio, or they can withdraw. The conversion terms also include a 0.50% premium. Traders holding meaningful USDT or wBTC balances should check exactly how that premium applies to their holdings before the cutoff.
ETH holders get the easy version. Their balances will be automatically converted to wETH at a 1:1 ratio, with no paperwork required.
Why Arc, and why now
Arc is Circle’s own blockchain, and its mainnet launched on September 16, 2026, with a founding validator set that includes BlackRock and Visa.
Extended’s stated goals for the move include faster performance through sub-second finality and stablecoin-denominated transaction fees. Extended has framed the migration as a way to build deeper connections with institutional investors, and predictable fees are part of that appeal.
USDC is Circle’s flagship stablecoin, so shifting stablecoin balances from USDT to USDC aligns the exchange with its new host chain’s native ecosystem.
The scale of the move
Extended holds approximately $117.7 million in total value locked, most of it on Starknet. Moving a nine-figure pool from one settlement layer to another, while keeping the order book live, is a meaningful operational test.
What this means for traders and the broader market
For Extended’s users, the near-term to-do list is short but non-negotiable. Anyone holding USDT or wBTC needs to convert or withdraw by October 21, 2026, and should plan around the two-hour deposit and withdrawal pause starting October 22 at 13:00 UTC.
For Arc, landing an established perpetuals exchange within weeks of mainnet is a useful early signal. A derivatives venue bringing approximately $117.7 million in TVL gives Arc a working, high-throughput use case to point to.
There is also a concentration question. Moving onto a chain built by a single stablecoin issuer, with USDC as the default dollar asset, ties Extended more closely to Circle’s ecosystem.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Starknet Foundation spustila Bramble, peněženku s vlastní správou pro ukládání, swapy a soukromé převody kryptoměn na síti Starknet s podporou standardu STRK20.
The Starknet Foundation has launched Bramble, a self-custodial wallet built for swapping, storing, and shielding crypto on Starknet. The release went live on October 20, 2026.
What Bramble actually does
Bramble is a self-custody wallet. That means users hold their own keys, rather than trusting an exchange or third party to hold them.
The headline feature is support for STRK20, Starknet’s privacy framework. STRK20 lets users maintain private balances on the network.
Bramble also plugs directly into Starknet’s on-chain privacy tools. Users can shield public tokens and send private transfers from inside the wallet.
Beyond privacy, the wallet supports Ledger hardware wallets. Hardware wallets keep private keys on a physical device, so signing a transaction requires the device itself.
Bramble also supports multisig accounts. A multisig account requires approval from more than one key before funds can move.
The self-custody controls go further. Bramble offers encrypted local vaults and spending allowances.
The road to launch
Hints about the wallet circulated as early as mid-September 2026. A beta version was available from October 12, 2026. The wallet was then publicly teased on October 19, a day before the official launch.
Bramble ships as a Chrome extension. The current listed version is 0.10.5, following a minor update on October 8, 2026.
Where STRK fits in
Starknet’s STRK token serves as the network’s fee, staking, and governance asset. Every transaction a Bramble user sends on Starknet runs on that infrastructure.
So far, there has been no immediate commentary from independent experts and no observed market reaction.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Kaye Quema. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
STRK za posledních sedm dní klesl o 43,7 % na 0,0624 USD, tedy na hodnotu o 51 % nižší než říjnové maximum, navzdory rekordním týdenním příjmům Starknetu ve výši 92 824 USD.
The L1 narrative rally has turned into a steady correction Starknet’s governance poll on going independent failed to stop the selling Record weekly network revenue landed in the middle of the decline The 200 EMA zone decides whether the larger uptrend survives STRK price has dropped to $0.0624 at the time of writing, roughly 51% below the $0.1268 high it printed around Oct 11–12, after a rally that took the Starknet token nearly five times higher in under four weeks on the back of StarkWare’s plan to turn the network into an independent post-quantum layer 1. The token is down 43.7% over the past seven days and 12.8% in the last 24 hours, its market cap has shrunk to $472.3 million, and the slide has continued even while STRK holders vote on whether that L1 plan should move into a research phase.
A quantum pitch fuelled a 385% run STRK was trading near $0.026 in mid-September, well before anyone at StarkWare spoke publicly about leaving Ethereum. The real trigger came on Oct 8, when Starknet said it was actively considering becoming an L1, a move that would let it become the first fully quantum-resistant network with 2027 as the target. StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson put the idea to the community as an open question the same day, and two days later StarkWare said an independent L1 was its clearest path forward, which lines up with the tallest green candles and the heaviest volume of the entire run on the 4H chart.
We are actively considering becoming an L1.
This would enable Starknet to become the first fully quantum-resistant network, with 2027 as our target. https://t.co/yaFlkp0R1P
— Starknet (@Starknet) October 8, 2026
StarkWare’s case for the move comes down to dependency on Ethereum, and according to the Starknet Foundation, the parts of the network Starknet controls itself can become quantum-resistant soon, while its bridge and data availability layer move on Ethereum’s schedule, and Ethereum’s own post-quantum team is only targeting initial protocol-level protections by 2029. Traders liked that pitch enough to buy it long before any vote existed, and STRK added about 385% from its September base to the October top.
Oct 8 · Starknet says it is considering an L1 move
Oct 10 · StarkWare calls an independent L1 its clearest path
Oct 11–12 · STRK peaks at $0.1268
Oct 15 · Poll opens, spike to $0.098 gets rejected
Oct 22 · Voting closes and results go public
Sellers ignored a revenue record On Oct 17, data from Chainspect showed Starknet’s weekly revenue topping $90,000 for the first time at $92,824, a 5.2% weekly gain that would normally give bulls something to point at. STRK kept sliding through that day and into the weekend, a sign that traders who rode the near fivefold move were still locking in gains regardless of what the network itself was reporting.
💰 @Starknet moved past $90K in weekly revenue for the first time.
$92,824 over the past week.
Starknet's weekly number just got a lot more interesting.
Two days earlier the poll launch had drawn the same reaction, after Starknet opened itsseven-day, non-binding governance poll on Oct 15, asking stakers and delegators whether the network should research becoming an independent post-quantum L1, with a yes vote leading to research and more detailed proposals and a no vote keeping post-quantum work on the current layer 2 path. STRK shot up to about $0.098 that day on one of the largest volume bars since the peak, then got rejected just under the 0.236 Fibonacci level at $0.103 and closed back inside the range, a failed bounce that confirmed the lower-high sequence and turned what looked like consolidation into a corrective trend.
STRK/USDT 4H chart. Source: TradingView / Alexander Stefanov RSI near oversold, no divergence yet RSI reads 32.3 on the 4H timeframe, below its signal line at 38.4 and close to oversold territory, though it is still making lower lows together with price, so there is no bullish divergence to suggest the selling is ending. Volume on the way down has been noticeably lighter than during the rally, which looks more like orderly profit-taking than panic while also showing that buyers have yet to step in with any size.
On the price side, STRK has now lost the 0.618 retracement at $0.0646, the level traders usually treat as the last line for a strong uptrend, and it trades in the gap between that level and the 200 EMA at $0.0591. The 50 SMA at $0.0854 has started to roll over above price and now sits close to the 0.382 Fib at $0.0883, leaving that band as the ceiling bulls would eventually need to clear.
What’s next for STRK Price? Level From price Zone 50 SMA + 0.382 Fib
$0.085–$0.088 +36% Trend reclaim 0.5 Fib
$0.0764 +22% Upside target 0.618 Fib
$0.0646 +3.5% Reclaim test ● STRK NOW · $0.0624 200 EMA + 0.707 Fib
$0.0555–$0.0591 −5% to −11% Main support 0.786 Fib + Oct 6–8 floor
$0.0476–$0.049 −21% to −24% Breakdown target STRK/USDT 4H levels, Binance.
The $0.0555–$0.0591 zone carries the most weight on the chart because it stacks the 0.707 Fib and the rising 200 EMA on top of the early-October breakout area, where the Oct 5 highs and the Oct 8–9 base sit. If buyers defend it, RSI prints a higher low and a 4H candle closes back above $0.0646, STRK has room to retest the 0.5 Fib at $0.0764. A 4H close under the 200 EMA and $0.0555 would point to $0.048–$0.049 instead, a 0.786 retracement of the whole September–October move that would read as a full reset of the rally.
The vote itself may offer less of a catalyst than its timing suggests. The poll has no quorum requirement and only authorises research, Starknet has published no timetable for an actual exit, and the Starknet governance forum makes clear that any real transition would need its own dedicated governance process later on. Even a clean yes on Oct 22 therefore leaves STRK holders waiting on proposals that do not exist yet, which is a slower story than the one the market paid for in early October.
Alex is a financial markets journalist and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, and he's spent close to ten years trying to answer one stubborn question: what's really driving this? It started in 2016, when Bitcoin refused to make sense to him - and rather than shrug, he stayed with it until it did. That patience became his method. He's less interested in what an asset is doing today than in the plumbing behind it: how liquidity flows, where risk hides, what a chart is quietly telling you that the headline isn't. That lens eventually stretched well past crypto into traditional markets, because the same forces - fear, leverage, incentives, timing - show up everywhere once you know how to look. Most coverage, in his view, insults the reader by stopping at the surface. Price up, price down, moving on. He'd rather leave someone genuinely understanding a move than merely informed that it happened. His path into markets ran through a Tourism degree at New Bulgarian University - proof, maybe, that curiosity beats credentials. With more than 200 deep analyses and over 10,000 articles behind him, he still walks away from most trading days having learned something he didn't know that morning.
Starknet aktivoval STRK20, který u aktiv ERC-20 umožňuje skrýt zůstatky, odesílatele, příjemce i částky a zároveň selektivně zpřístupnit údaje pro audit.
Starknet now offers programmable private money, the kind of confidential digital cash Zcash pioneered, through its new privacy features.
The effort runs on two tracks. One is STRK20, a token privacy framework that is live on Starknet, the Ethereum layer 2 network. The other is Ztarknet, a project still in development that would bring Starknet’s execution engine to Zcash as its own layer 2.
What STRK20 actually does STRK20 is a framework for token-level privacy. It applies to any ERC-20-like asset, the standard format for most tokens in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Once a token uses STRK20, its balances and transfers can be confidential. The sender, the receiver, and the amount can all be hidden from public view.
The framework supports DeFi activity such as swaps, lending, and staking while keeping transaction details private.
Compliance is built in through two mechanisms: viewing keys and selective disclosure. A viewing key lets an authorized party, such as an auditor, see transaction details that remain hidden from everyone else. Selective disclosure allows a user to prove specific facts about their activity to a specific party without exposing everything to the entire network.
The research describes the result as enabling Zcash-like private assets directly on Starknet. The first major asset to use STRK20 is strkBTC, a shielded form of Bitcoin on the network.
The road from testnet to mainnet By November 2025, the Ztarknet testnet had launched with a live explorer. It demonstrated verification of Circle STARK proofs on a modified Zcash testnet.
Then came Starknet v0.14.2 in April 2026. The upgrade enabled native STARK proof verification through a proposal called SNIP-36, which laid the groundwork for STRK20.
STRK20 itself was activated by June 2026.
Ztarknet remains in development. Its design uses ZEC, Zcash’s native token, to pay settlement fees on the Zcash base layer. It relies on the Madara sequencer, which orders transactions, and the Stwo prover, which generates the STARK proofs. Ztarknet is designed to operate without changing Zcash’s existing shielded pools.
Why the Starknet and Zcash overlap matters Eli Ben-Sasson and Zooko Wilcox, two prominent figures in blockchain and privacy, are heavily involved in both efforts.
What this means for privacy in crypto STRK20’s viewing keys and selective disclosure are designed to address compliance concerns that have historically put pressure on privacy coins. The research suggests that as privacy rules tighten globally, platforms offering compliant private transactions are likely to draw institutional interest.
For DeFi, public blockchains broadcast every trade, which exposes users to front-running and makes large positions easy to track. Confidential swaps and lending could make onchain finance more workable for anyone who prefers not to show their hand.
The key milestones ahead sit with Ztarknet. Watch for progress from testnet toward production, how ZEC-based settlement performs in practice, and whether developers actually build on it.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Arcus, the DEX built by the dYdX team on Robinhood Chain, has nearly $60M in TVL three months after launch and has listed Starknet's $STRK for perps trading.
Arcus, a decentralized exchange that launched in July alongside Robinhood Chain, is approaching $60M in total value locked (TVL), according to DeFiLlama data. The platform has reported a 146% rise in TVL over the past month, and has now added @Starknet's $STRK to its perpetual futures markets with up to 5x leverage.
Arcus TVL climbs as Robinhood Chain maturesDeFiLlama's protocol page lists Arcus TVL at $58.91M, with all of it deployed on Robinhood Chain. A separate chain-level view shows the protocol's TVL at about $61.77M, making it the top-ranked protocol on the network.
That is a sharp climb from earlier in the platform's life. In July, The Defiant reported that Arcus held $17.1M in TVL while the chain as a whole stood at $588.9M by Artemis' measure. DeFiLlama now puts Robinhood Chain's DeFi TVL at about $1.05B.
Arcus was built by the team behind dYdX in partnership with Robinhood Crypto. Crypto Briefing reported that the exchange went live on July 1 with 95 tokenized stocks and 35 perpetual futures contracts, with leverage of up to 50x on real-world asset perps. It runs separately from the dYdX v4 Chain.
Activity on the platform is dominated by derivatives. DeFiLlama data shows Arcus has recorded about $12.4B in cumulative perps volume, against $385.5M in cumulative spot DEX volume. Open interest stands near $99M.
$STRK perps listing adds to the product rangeArcus offers spot and perps trading natively on Robinhood Chain. The addition of $STRK perps, with leverage of up to 5x, widens the set of crypto assets available alongside its tokenized equity and commodity products.
Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum Layer 2 network built on the Arbitrum technology stack. Robinhood's own announcement said the public mainnet launched as a turnkey environment for builders, natively connected to its onchain users.
Leveraged trading carries high risk, and TVL figures can vary by data provider and methodology. DeFiLlama, for example, uses a narrower definition than Artemis, as The Defiant noted in its July report.
Sources:
DeFiLlama: Arcus TVL, fees, revenue and volume
The Defiant: Robinhood Chain overtakes Base on daily active users
Crypto Briefing: Arcus launches on Robinhood Chain
ShapeShift is trying to fix that for Starknet users. The multichain swap aggregator now supports Starknet, letting users complete a trade in one swap with no bridge step.
ShapeShift announced the integration on October 16, 2026. Starknet amplified the news a day later, on October 17, 2026, describing the network as now available on the platform.
What the integration actually does The core change is about friction. Before this, getting value into or out of Starknet through a typical route meant two separate actions: bridging first, then swapping.
Now the platform handles it as a single trade. You pick what you have and what you want, and ShapeShift does the routing behind the scenes.
The integration also involved updates to ShapeShift’s technical configurations to support the new network. The announcement did not name specific tokens or trading pairs included in the launch.
Who’s involved Starknet is an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution built on zk-STARK technology. Layer 2 networks process transactions off Ethereum’s main chain and then settle back to it, aiming for lower costs and higher throughput.
Starknet has positioned itself around three priorities: scalability, privacy, and interoperability. The ShapeShift integration lines up most directly with the third one.
ShapeShift has been in development since 2014. Today it operates as a community-led multichain swap aggregator. An aggregator does not hold all the liquidity itself. Instead it searches across sources to find a route for a trade.
The platform already supports multiple chains and has recently leaned further into interoperability. In September 2026, ShapeShift released its swap stack as a free widget and API for developers.
That earlier move is relevant context. If developers embed ShapeShift’s swap tooling in their own apps, any new chain ShapeShift supports could potentially travel further than ShapeShift’s own interface.
Why this matters for Starknet and its users For Starknet, the bigger prize is access. Layer 2 networks compete partly on how easy it is to get money in and out of them.
Plugging into an established multichain aggregator puts Starknet in front of users who may not have gone looking for it. Someone already using ShapeShift for other chains now sees Starknet as just another destination on the menu.
Removing the bridging step could encourage more frequent and smaller transactions, since the overhead of each trade drops. The integration could also lift trading volume on ShapeShift’s platform and user engagement on Starknet. The announcement did not include any volume or usage figures.
The bigger interoperability picture For traders and investors watching Starknet, the practical signals to monitor are straightforward. Look for changes in Starknet transaction volumes and for any data ShapeShift shares on Starknet-related activity.
Watch, too, whether developers using ShapeShift’s free widget and API start surfacing Starknet swaps inside their own products. That would be the clearest sign the integration is spreading beyond a single front end.
The open question is which assets and pairs see real use once the novelty fades. The announcement left those specifics out, so actual trading behavior over the coming weeks will tell the more useful story.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Starknet now has a velvet rope. The Starknet Foundation introduced the Starknet VIP Program on October 16, 2026, and it targets holders of the network’s native STRK token and strkBTC, its Bitcoin wrapper asset.
According to the program’s page at vip.starknet.io, the program is now open to supported STRK and strkBTC holders.
What VIP status actually gets you The perks lean toward access rather than cash. Qualifying holders are set to receive priority support, direct interaction with the Foundation team, confirmed access to events, and additional benefits the Foundation has yet to disclose.
The program covers two assets with different jobs. STRK serves as Starknet’s governance and staking token, and it is also used to pay fees on the network. In practical terms, STRK is how you vote, how you stake, and how you pay for transactions.
strkBTC is the newer piece. It launched in May 2026 as a wrapped version of Bitcoin built for Starknet’s DeFi applications.
strkBTC was initially secured by a federation of institutions. It also includes optional shielding, which lets users keep certain transactions private.
The Bitcoin push behind the perks The VIP Program did not arrive in a vacuum. It follows a string of Bitcoin-focused moves as Starknet works to build out what the industry calls BTCFi, or decentralized finance built around Bitcoin.
In late 2025, Starknet distributed 100 million STRK as part of its push toward Bitcoin integration.
More recently, the network ran a program covering bridging fees for the first 100 BTC moved onto Starknet.
There is also a weekly strkBTC faucet worth approximately $833.
Starknet recently launched v0.14.4 on mainnet, and the VIP Program arrives in the middle of that ongoing upgrade cycle.
What this means for holders and the network On the market side, research findings note a 47% increase in STRK’s value shortly after the announcement, a move linked to interest in BTCFi and privacy upgrades.
There are open questions worth watching. The Foundation has not yet published eligibility thresholds or how long the program will run.
strkBTC’s security model also bears watching. Because it was initially secured by a federation of institutions, users are trusting that group to manage the underlying Bitcoin.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Držitelé STRK hlasují o dalším zkoumání možnosti, že se Starknet kvůli kvantovým rizikům oddělí od Etherea a stane se samostatným Layer 1. Hlasování není závazné.
The Starknet community is voting on whether to explore the possibility of an independent Layer 1 network due to quantum risks. The current vote is not binding.
Starknet, the second-layer network running on Ethereum, has opened a community vote on the possibility of becoming an independent Layer 1 blockchain. The seven-day vote gives STRK holders the option to support continued research, oppose it, or remain neutral until more information is provided.
The vote will close on October 22nd, and the results will be announced later. However, a positive outcome doesn’t mean Starknet will immediately separate from Ethereum. The current vote only gauges community opinion on the need for a more detailed technical and economic investigation of an independent network option.
A real transition will require the preparation of new technical proposals, the publication of a detailed roadmap, and additional governance votes. Currently, there is no set date for the transition.
StarkWare, the developer of Starknet, argues that a standalone Layer 1 option could enable faster implementation of quantum computing-resistant security systems. In its current configuration, Starknet performs transaction calculations on its own network but relies on Ethereum for key areas such as bridging, data accessibility, and ultimate security.
StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson believes the transition to quantum-resistant cryptography is urgent. In June, the company unveiled a three-phase roadmap aiming to make Starknet fully quantum-attack resistant by 2027. This plan includes updating signature systems, migrating smart contracts, and replacing infrastructure components tied to Ethereum.
Ethereum developers are also working on post-quantum security, but the first protocol-level protections are targeted for rollout in 2029. The central question is whether Starknet will wait for this timeline.
*This is not investment advice.
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StarkWare zpřístupnil OffMarket, který umožňuje zadávat na Polymarketu objednávky, aniž by byly pozice veřejně propojeny s existujícími účty. Limit vkladu činí 1 000 USDC na účet.
StarkWare has opened OffMarket to the public, allowing users to trade on Polymarket without publicly linking their positions to existing accounts. The service has been in limited beta testing since August, leveraging zero-knowledge technology and sharing a privacy pool on Starknet. Current per-account deposit limits are set at 1,000 USDC, with adjustments planned based on demand. Prediction orders still execute on Polymarket with the same counterparties and at identical market prices. The service is non-custodial, with user keys remaining stored locally in users’ browsers. Additionally, Polymarket transaction records are public on Polygon, with positions, order sizes, and trading history all viewable. OffMarket still does not fully prevent others from inferring a trader’s identity through trade size or timing, as market quotes and executions themselves remain public. This product is not an official Polymarket offering, has no formal partnership or special access privileges, and is part of Polymarket’s Verified Builder Program, retaining its geographic restrictions including a ban on U.S. users. Independent compliance firm Financial Privacy Inc. holds the master viewing key for sanction screening and required disclosures under lawful requests. L2BEAT data shows that the shared privacy pool on Starknet currently holds approximately $1.5 million in total value across 17,000 deposits.
Starknet zvažuje přechod ze sítě Ethereum L2 na samostatnou L1, aby urychlil ochranu před hrozbami spojenými s kvantovými počítači a AI; plné kvantové odolnosti chce dosáhnout do roku 2027.
Can the most important crypto projects effectively fortify themselves ahead of the arrival of Q-Day or major AI breakthroughs in math?
That’s the grand question, and one that’s being debated more than ever in the wake of Justin Drake’s recent “bunker mode” comments.
Only time will tell if those remarks underestimated or overestimated the timeline regarding math breakthroughs. But, in any case, both the quantum and AI threats are very real. They’re not distant, abstract dangers, and some crypto projects are taking these specters more seriously than others.
Among these projects is Starknet, whose builders made waves last week when they announced they were considering transitioning the chain from an Ethereum L2 to a standalone L1 network.
Why? To harden against quantum and AI more quickly than the chain can while being directly tethered to Ethereum.
As some of you may recall, StarkWare’s post-quantum roadmap from June 30th didn’t float an L1, and StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson has since stressed that this idea has evolved recently from the growing concern that traditional cryptography might get broken much sooner than the crypto industry expects.
— (@)
The logic is that as an L1, Starknet could set the pace of its security upgrades rather than follow Ethereum's, putting it on track for what it bills as "the first fully quantum-resistant network," targeted for 2027. So why can't Starknet get there as an L2?
The June roadmap shows why. It splits Starknet's quantum migration into three phases. The first two (e.g. swapping Pedersen hashing for the quantum-resistant BLAKE2, adding post-quantum signatures like Falcon-512, and migrating legacy contracts) are Starknet's to execute, while the third phase isn't, as it covers two pieces Starknet effectively borrows from Ethereum. Namely:
Bridge messaging, which uses quantum-vulnerable elliptic-curve calls to move messages between the two chains. StarkWare is explicit that removing those calls before Ethereum migrates would break the bridge.
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Blob data, i.e. the state data Starknet publishes to Ethereum via blobs, anchored by elliptic-curve-based KZG commitments. A broken KZG would hurt data availability per StarkWare, not the soundness of Starknet's state, which stays guarded by STARK proofs. Still, the June roadmap leaves this fix entirely to Ethereum.
That said, it might be a few years before Ethereum finishes its own post-quantum evolutions, which would put key pieces of Starknet’s defensive roadmap on ice for at least that long.
This is a point that other projects will undoubtedly contend with, too. Since a rollup inherits the L1’s cryptography alongside its security, its quantum timeline is effectively whichever is slower, its own or the L1's.
Thus, simply put, Starknet is anticipating coming up against this wall because it can do its side of the work much faster. What’s interesting too is that some of Ethereum’s own quantum plans will make it look more like Starknet.
For instance, Ethereum is pursuing EIP-8141, which among other things would let accounts adopt quantum-safe signatures on their own timelines rather than wait for a network-wide migration. Starknet, meanwhile, has had native account abstraction (i.e. every account is a programmable smart contract) for years. That's why S2morrow could already build a post-quantum Starknet account around Falcon-512 signatures with no protocol changes.
Moreover, Ethereum plans to swap its BLS validator signatures for leanXMSS, a hash-based scheme, and to compress the bulkier results with zk proofs via leanVM. It also lists STARK-based commitments among the leading candidates to replace KZG. STARKs are hash-based by design and put the "Stark" in Starknet.
In kind, over the past couple of years Starknet has assembled much of the machinery it would need to become an L1, like STRK staking, multiple sequencers, etc. These pieces were originally made to make Starknet a better decentralized extension of Ethereum, but they do shrink the chain’s L1 question considerably.
From what I can tell, the missing parts for now are data availability (i.e. where transaction data gets published so anyone can rebuild the chain), final settlement, and reworking the official bridge as needed.
Speaking of bridging, consider how a StarkGate withdrawal works today: funds only release after Ethereum has verified the proof for the withdrawal's block and the matching state update has landed there. Put otherwise, Ethereum checks Starknet's math, so Starknet's operators can't forge the state that bridged funds depend on.
An L1 Starknet could land anywhere on that spectrum, though. It might keep posting STARK proofs to Ethereum to back a trust-minimized bridge, or it might cut the cord entirely. Those are very different trust models, so this is the open question I'd watch closely.
Remember, too, that Starknet has long pitched itself as a layer that could one day settle on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. That's not the same thing as leaving Ethereum, but a proof-connected Starknet L1 bridging to both would arguably rhyme with that vision more than break from it.
For now, nothing official has kicked off but it seems clear that an L1 architecture will be the path forward for Starknet. Whatever happens, the chain wants to move sooner rather than later, because there might not be a later for the projects that don’t make adjustments in time. Fair enough, I say.
According to an official announcement, Starknet has launched Shadow Accounts, allowing users to participate in public DeFi activities via an independent, self-controlled address while keeping the link between this address and their main wallet confidential. Shadow Accounts are independent pseudonymous addresses on Starknet, funded by users’ protected STRK20 balances. The first integration will launch tomorrow. While the balance, transaction history, and application positions of Shadow Accounts remain publicly visible on-chain, STRK20 protects the connection between these accounts and users’ main wallets. This means users do not need to hide their DeFi activities themselves, while reducing the likelihood that external observers can trace those activities back to their main wallets.
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Three under-the-radar altcoin projects outpaced the rest of the digital asset sector in terms of recent network growth, according to the crypto analytics firm Santiment.
Santiment measures growth by calculating the network’s number of new wallets created.
Cap (CAP), a covered credit application, tops the analytics firm’s list, with 800% week-over-week network growth. The decentralized finance (DeFi) project utilizes a digital dollar, a credit platform and a financial guarantee market to underwrite individual loans.
The CAP token is trading at $0.09586 at time of writing, per data from CoinGecko. The 225th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up 30% in the past week.
Second on Santiment’s list is Grass (GRASS), which witnessed 699% week-over-week network growth.
Grass is a network that lets users earn rewards for sharing unused internet bandwidth. The GRASS token, the 112th-ranked crypto asset by market cap, is trading at $0.7886 at time of writing and is up more than 2% in the past week.
In third place is Starknet (STRK), which saw network growth of 469%. Starknet is a ZK execution layer that aims to scale Ethereum (ETH).
The STRK token is trading at $0.09367 at time of writing. The 96th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up nearly 77% in the past seven days.
Cronos 17. října odemkne pro strategickou rezervu 1,17 miliardy tokenů CRO v hodnotě 70,85 milionu USD; Tokenomist tyto údaje označil za neověřené projekce.
The crypto market will welcome tokens worth $845.8 million in the third week of October 2026. Major projects, including Cronos (CRO), Arbitrum (ARB), and Starknet (STRK), will release significant new token supplies.
These unlocks could introduce market volatility and influence short-term price movements. So, here’s a breakdown of what to watch.
1. Cronos (CRO) Unlock Date: October 17 Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 1.17 billion CRO Released Supply: 49.97 billion CRO Total Supply: 100 billion CRO Cronos is a Layer-1 blockchain ecosystem developed alongside Crypto.com. It runs an EVM-compatible chain, Cronos EVM, and a Cosmos SDK-based chain, Cronos POS. CRO is the network’s native token, used for transaction fees and staking.
On October 17, Cronos will unlock 1.17 billion CRO worth $70.85 million. The tokens account for 2.33% of the released supply.
CRO Crypto Token Unlock in October. Source: TokenomistThe entire release will go to a single allocation, the Cronos Strategic Reserve.
2. Arbitrum (ARB) Unlock Date: October 16 Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 92.65 million ARB Released Supply: 5.95 billion ARB Total Supply: 10 billion ARB Arbitrum is a Layer-2 scaling solution built for Ethereum (ETH). It enhances transaction speed and reduces costs while maintaining the security of the Ethereum network.
The blockchain achieves this by utilizing ‘optimistic rollups,’ which process transactions off-chain and submit them to the Ethereum mainnet for validation.
On October 16, Arbitrum will unlock 92.65 million tokens into the market. The tokens are worth $18.40 million and represent 1.56% of the released supply.
ARB Crypto Token Unlock in October. Source: TokenomistArbitrum will award 56.13 million ARB from the unlocked supply to the team, future team, and advisors. Moreover, investors will gain 36.52 million tokens.
3. Starknet (STRK) Unlock Date: October 15 Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 127 million STRK Released Supply: 3.77 billion STRK Total Supply: 10 billion STRK Starknet is an Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution built with STARK-based zero-knowledge rollups. STRK is the network’s native utility and governance token.
On October 15, Starknet will release 127 million STRK worth $15.42 million. The supply accounts for 3.37% of the released supply.
STRK Crypto Token Unlock in October. Source: TokenomistEarly contributors will receive 66.61 million STRK from the unlock. In addition, investors will get 60.39 million tokens.
In addition to these three, Connex (CONX), Cheelee (CHEEL), and Aerodrome Finance (AERO) will also experience new supply entering the market this week. Tokenomist has marked the Cronos, Arbitrum, and Starknet unlocks as pending verification, so these figures remain projections.
Nová peněženka otevřela na Hyperliquid dlouhou pozici s 3× pákou v hodnotě 24,42 milionu STRK a za méně než den vykázala nerealizovaný zisk 1,056 milionu USD.
Kripto piyasasında yeni oluşturulan bir cüzdan, Starknet (STRK) işlemiyle dikkat çekti. Cüzdan sahibi, dün 24,42 milyon STRK için 3x kaldıraçlı long pozisyon açtı. Yaklaşık 2,9 milyon dolar değerindeki işlem, kısa sürede 1 milyon doların üzerinde gerçekleşmemiş kâra ulaştı.
Zincir üstü verileri paylaşan Lookonchain’e göre pozisyonun kârı 1,056 milyon dolar seviyesinde. Ancak bu tutar henüz kesinleşmiş kazanç değil; işlem açık kaldığı sürece STRK fiyatına bağlı olarak değişebilir.
STRK İşleminde 1 Milyon Doları Nasıl Kazandı? Paylaşılan işlem verilerine göre cüzdan, Hyperliquid üzerinde STRK için 3x kaldıraçlı long pozisyon açtı. İşlemde toplam 24,42 milyon STRK bulunuyor ve pozisyonun güncel değeri yaklaşık 2,91 milyon dolar.
Pozisyonun giriş fiyatı 0,07603 dolar olarak görünürken Starknet fiyatı 0,11929 dolara yükseldi. Token fiyatındaki bu hareket, kaldıraçlı pozisyondaki kârı da büyüttü.
Ekrandaki verilere göre işlem şu anda yaklaşık 1.056.440 dolar gerçekleşmemiş kâr taşıyor. Böylece yeni cüzdan, bir günden kısa sürede 1 milyon doları aşan bir kâra ulaşmış oldu.
Starknet Fiyatı Düşerse Ne Olur? Pozisyonun büyüklüğü kadar tasfiye seviyesi de dikkat çekiyor. İşlem ekranında STRK long pozisyonu için tasfiye fiyatı 0,064481 dolar olarak gösteriliyor.
3x kaldıraç, STRK yükseldiğinde getiriyi artırırken fiyat ters yönde hareket ettiğinde zararı da büyütebilir. Tasfiye fiyatına yaklaşılması halinde pozisyon zorunlu olarak kapatılma riskiyle karşılaşır.
Burada önemli ayrım, 1 milyon doları aşan tutarın gerçekleşmiş kâr değil, açık pozisyondaki kazanç olması. Cüzdan sahibi pozisyonu kapatmadığı sürece fiyat hareketleri bu tutarı değiştirebilir.
STRK işlemi, kısa sürede büyük kazanç sağlayan kaldıraçlı pozisyonların ne kadar hızlı büyüyebildiğini gösteriyor. Ancak pozisyonun açık kalması, mevcut kârın korunacağını garanti etmiyor.
Bu içerik genel piyasa verilerine dayanır ve yatırım tavsiyesi değildir. Kendi araştırmanızı yapmanızı öneririz.
Son Dakika kripto para haberleri için hemen tıkla.
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Starknet's native token $STRK surged over 100% on the week after the Ethereum Layer 2 announced it is actively considering a move to become an independent Layer 1 blockchain, with a 2027 quantum-resistance target.
@Starknet's native token $STRK has surged more than 107% over the past week, making it one of the standout performers in the crypto market. The catalyst: a statement from the @Starknet team saying it is actively weighing a transition from an Ethereum Layer 2 network into a fully independent Layer 1 blockchain.
The Announcement That Moved Markets The announcement came on October 8, 2026, when Starknet said on its official account: The statement was enough to send $STRK to its highest level in nine months.
It is worth noting that no final decision has been made.
What It Could Mean for the Broader L2 Ecosystem The market reaction has been striking enough to raise a broader question: could other @Ethereum L2 projects follow suit? The momentum around $STRK suggests investor appetite for L2 networks that signal a path toward greater protocol independence.
Traders should also keep an eye on near-term supply dynamics. Whether strong trading volumes can absorb that additional supply will be a key test of whether the rally has real staying power.
Sources:
STRK Token Outperforms Bitcoin to Hit 9-Month High, Yahoo Finance
STRK rallies as Starknet weighs a move from Ethereum layer 2 to its own layer 1, Crypto Briefing
STRK Price Rises as Starknet Targets Quantum-Resistant L1 by 2027, Crypto Times
According to HTX market data, STRK (Starknet) has extended its 24-hour gain to 55%, briefly breaking above $0.12 and currently trading at $0.11, leading the altcoin market rally. On the news front, StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson stated at Token2049 and in subsequent remarks that blockchains need post-quantum readiness and cryptographic agility to counter threats from quantum computing and AI acceleration. He clarified that Starknet is actively considering multiple options, including separating from Ethereum to become an independent Layer 1 (L1) chain, so as to independently control the pace of security migration, with the goal of achieving full quantum resistance by 2027 — earlier than Ethereum’s planned timeline. This "shift to L1 + quantum resistance" narrative quickly became a market focus, driving STRK’s consecutive sharp rally. On the technical and ecosystem front, the v0.14.4 mainnet launched on October 5, expanding SNIP-36 single-proof capacity to approximately 1.1 billion L2 gas, enabling proof verification for larger-scale off-chain computations; the strkBTC incentive program went live on October 2 (with the first 100 bridged BTC covering bridging fees and receiving weekly airdrops), further strengthening the Bitcoin-related narrative.
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Systém Stwo pro generování důkazů ve Starknetu snížil špičkovou spotřebu paměti z 13,9 GiB na 2,1 GiB, což umožňuje generovat důkazy o transakcích přímo na smartphonech.
Generating a zero-knowledge proof has long been a job for serious hardware. Now a phone can do it.
Open research on Stwo, the prover powering Starknet, has reduced its peak memory use from 13.9 GiB to 2.1 GiB. That reduction is what allows a smartphone to generate proofs for Starknet transactions.
From workstation territory to your pocket A prover is software that produces a cryptographic proof. Think of the proof as a compact mathematical receipt showing that a batch of computation was done correctly.
Anyone can check that receipt quickly without redoing the work. STARK proofs, the type Starknet relies on, are one way to build those receipts.
Peak memory is the most RAM the prover needs at any single moment during that job. The research narrowed that doorway requirement dramatically. A job that once demanded 13.9 GiB at its worst moment now tops out at 2.1 GiB.
Community contributors had already flagged memory peaks above 13 GiB in earlier builds, before the latest round of optimizations arrived.
Separate benchmarks put Stwo’s typical memory footprint somewhere between roughly 10 GiB and 20+ GiB, scaling with the size of the workload. Against that backdrop, a 2.1 GiB peak for transaction proofs looks less like a trim and more like a full renovation.
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The phone claim is not purely theoretical. Millions of local ZK proofs have been generated across thousands of smartphone models.
“Local” is the key word. The proof is created on the device itself, rather than handed off to a remote server to crunch.
How Stwo got here Starknet is a Layer 2 network built on top of Ethereum, designed to make transactions more efficient and accessible. Proofs are central to how it works, which makes the prover one of its most important pieces of infrastructure.
Stwo went live on Starknet mainnet on November 3, 2025. It replaced the earlier Stone prover and now handles proving for all Starknet blocks.
Starkware made the move as part of a roadmap that emphasizes client-side and decentralized proving at lower cost.
Client-side proving means the user’s own device generates the proof. Decentralized proving spreads that work across many participants instead of concentrating it with a handful of specialized operators.
The effort also leaned on open, community-driven research. That collaborative approach produced substantial optimizations, rather than leaving every improvement to a single internal team.
Stwo is not the only item on Starkware’s list. The company is also advancing recursive proving techniques, which significantly shrink proof sizes, and is working to integrate post-quantum signatures.
Recursive proving is roughly the cryptographic version of nesting dolls: proofs that verify other proofs, compressing a lot of work into a smaller final package. Post-quantum signatures aim to keep accounts secure even if future quantum computers become capable of breaking today’s cryptography.
What this means for Starknet and its users The most direct implication is for privacy. When a phone can generate its own proof, sensitive transaction data does not need to leave the device to be processed elsewhere.
That is why the upgrade is expected to boost the performance of decentralized applications, particularly those built around privacy and security.
The 2.1 GiB figure applies to transaction proofs, while broader benchmarks show Stwo’s memory needs climbing past 20 GiB for larger workloads. In other words, phones handling their own transactions is a different job from proving entire blocks. The heavy lifting for the network as a whole still scales with workload size.
If developers begin shipping wallets and dApps that generate proofs on-device by default, the memory breakthrough becomes a product feature rather than a research result.
For a field where “runs on a phone” has often meant “runs a demo on a phone,” millions of proofs across thousands of handset models is a notably sturdier claim.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Vesu na síti Starknet odměňuje dlužníky tokeny STRK za půjčky stablecoinů zajištěné tokenizovaným Bitcoinem, takže čistá roční procentní sazba (APR) přes Sats Terminal může klesnout k nule nebo do záporných hodnot.
Borrowing money usually costs money. On Starknet, borrowers are now being paid to do it, at least partially.
Vesu, a lending protocol on Starknet, lets users borrow against BTC and earn STRK rewards on those loans. The rewards for borrowers were announced on October 8, 2026. They are meant to lower the net cost of borrowing for users who come in through the Sats Terminal frontend.
How the Vesu rewards work Vesu operates as a modular, permissionless lending market. Its pools can be set up for different assets and risk profiles instead of everything sharing one giant bucket.
The tokens eligible for both collateral and rewards are WBTC, LBTC, SolvBTC, tBTC, and strkBTC. Each one is a tokenized version of Bitcoin, which is how BTC shows up on networks it was never built to run on.
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Borrowers who take out stablecoins against that BTC collateral can claim STRK rewards every week.
Sats Terminal is the user-facing layer. It gives borrowers a simpler interface for setting up BTC-backed loans. During reward periods, loans taken through Sats Terminal can carry effective net APRs that sit near zero or even dip into negative territory.
If the STRK a borrower collects is worth more than the interest they owe, the loan effectively pays them. The rewards arrive in STRK, so their actual value depends on what the token is worth when a borrower claims it.
The 100 million STRK backdrop The Starknet Foundation has set aside 100 million STRK for its BTCFi Season program, which is built to encourage onchain Bitcoin activity, borrowing included.
Vesu V2 launched around October 2025, adding curated pools for BTC collateral and expanding the lending capacity available to Starknet’s BTCFi users.
What this means for borrowers and Starknet For borrowers, the cost math is the obvious draw. A loan with a near-zero or negative net rate is unusual in almost any market.
It is also subsidized, and subsidies are temporary by design. The cheap borrowing window lasts only as long as the reward periods run and the STRK keeps flowing.
Reward value is the other moving piece. A negative net APR calculated today is only as good as STRK’s value on claim day, which makes the headline rate a snapshot rather than a guarantee.
The near-term signals to watch are straightforward. Watch whether Vesu’s volumes and total value locked climb during the reward periods, how quickly the 100 million STRK allocation is put to work, and whether borrowing activity holds up when the incentives eventually wind down.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The network says it is actively considering becoming an L1, with 2027 as the target for becoming the first fully quantum-resistant chain.
Starknet weighs becoming a Layer 1 to chase quantum resistance by 2027
Posted October 8, 2026 at 6:44 am ET.
Starknet is “actively considering becoming an L1,” the network said in a post on X on Thursday. The move would let Starknet become “the first fully quantum-resistant network,” according to the post, which set 2027 as the target.
Starknet is currently a layer-2 network that publishes its state data to Ethereum as blobs, according to its own post-quantum roadmap.
This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.
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Ben-Sasson Frames the Question Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, put the idea to his followers minutes earlier. He asked whether “Starknet becoming an L1 for post-quantum agility” is a good idea or a bad one.
He pointed to two pressures. The first is the quantum threat, which he said “may be MUCH closer than we think.” The second is AI, which he said is “becoming more powerful than we can process.” Together, he wrote, they call for “bunker mode.”
Ben-Sasson listed three requirements for a chain to be future-proofed: the right cryptography, crypto agility and becoming an L1. He said the post connects to a talk he gave at Token2049 on Thursday.
The Existing Quantum Roadmap StarkWare published a three-phase post-quantum roadmap for Starknet on June 30. The first phase replaces Pedersen hashing with BLAKE2 across the state, chain environment and consensus layers, and plans consensus signatures built on post-quantum schemes such as Falcon-512. The second phase covers migrating existing contracts.
The third phase covers two dependencies on Ethereum, the bridge’s messaging layer and blob data availability. StarkWare said in the roadmap that those “will be resolved as Ethereum’s migration progresses.” The roadmap did not mention becoming an L1.
The roadmap also said that all protocol-level changes to Starknet are subject to approval through its governance process. Neither Thursday post said whether or when a decision on the L1 idea would be taken.
Related Listen: How Zcash and NEAR Are Driving This Crypto Bull Run
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
Starknet pushed version 0.14.4 to mainnet on October 5, 2026, and the defining theme of the release is scale.
The upgrade also brings small gas-pricing adjustments, removes some legacy infrastructure, and sets a firm requirement for node operators to update their software.
What actually changed under the hood The release first went live on testnet, with activation on September 15, 2026. That gave builders and infrastructure providers a few weeks to kick the tires before the mainnet switch.
The centerpiece is an expansion of SNIP-36, a Starknet improvement proposal focused on proving off-chain work. Developers can run compute-heavy logic off-chain, then submit the result to Starknet as one proven transaction.
Instead of paying full execution fees for every step of that computation, developers pay proof fees.
With v0.14.4, the ceiling on that approach rises substantially. Proofs of eligible single-transaction virtual blocks can now reach up to 1.1B Layer 2 gas, which is approximately the scale of a full Starknet block.
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The second notable change concerns gas weights, which determine how much different operations cost. Starknet made minor adjustments designed to align transaction pricing with the actual economic costs borne by the sequencer and the broader network.
Based on recent traffic data, the adjustments are aimed at shifting costs by less than 1% for the majority of transactions.
The housekeeping that can still break things Starknet has deprecated and removed legacy feeder gateway endpoints, including call and get_storage_at. Any application or tool still leaning on those endpoints will need to migrate elsewhere.
The team also began internal sequencer improvements. One of these moves the block committer into Starknet’s Apollo processes.
The most urgent item belongs to node operators. Full nodes must run either Pathfinder v0.24.0 or Juno v0.16.6 to keep operating on the upgraded network.
Proofs generated under v0.14.3 are rejected by the new verifier, so outdated setups will not simply limp along.
Where this fits in Starknet’s roadmap Starknet is a Layer 2 network built on STARK technology, a cryptographic proof system that lets large amounts of computation be verified cheaply.
The network is working through a multi-year roadmap centered on three goals: improving performance, refining fee structures, and moving toward decentralization.
The previous release, v0.14.3, introduced dynamic L2 gas fees alongside performance enhancements. Version 0.14.4 builds directly on that foundation, with gas-weight tweaks fine-tuning what individual operations should cost within that system.
What this means for developers, operators, and STRK holders For developers, the expanded SNIP-36 capacity is the headline. Applications built around heavy computation now have a path to settle that work on Starknet in a single proven transaction, paying for the proof rather than every individual step.
For node operators and infrastructure providers, the takeaway is less abstract. Pathfinder v0.24.0 or Juno v0.16.6 is now a requirement, and any tooling built on the removed feeder gateway endpoints needs attention.
For holders of STRK, Starknet’s native token, the token has drawn market attention tied to the upgrade cycle and its link to how fees are structured.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ekubo na Starknet přidal soukromé swapy pro shielded tokeny, takže obchodníci mohou obchodovat bez propojení identity či historie peněženky. První využití je strkBTC.
Ekubo, the dominant automated market maker on Starknet, has added support for private swaps of shielded tokens, letting traders execute transactions without linking their identity or wallet history to the trade. The feature builds on Starknet’s STRK20 privacy framework and routes through a specialized intermediary called the ShieldedSwapRouter.
For a protocol that already controls roughly 60% of AMM total value locked on Starknet, the addition of on-chain privacy is a meaningful expansion of what concentrated liquidity DEXs can offer.
How the privacy layer actually works Zero-knowledge proofs and Merkle proofs work together to confirm that a user has valid funds and authorization to trade, without ever broadcasting who that user is.
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Practically, the flow works like this: a user’s shielded token balance sits inside a privacy contract, the ShieldedSwapRouter constructs the necessary proofs, and then it hooks into Ekubo’s existing ILocker callback interface to execute the swap inside a standard liquidity pool. The pool itself sees a normal trade. The identity of the person behind it stays hidden.
One important caveat: swap amounts and price impacts remain visible on-chain. Privacy here means anonymity of the trader, not secrecy of the trade size.
The ShieldedSwapRouter charges a 30 basis point fee for facilitating this process, on top of Ekubo’s standard pool fees.
Why this matters for Starknet’s DeFi ecosystem Ekubo announced the anonymous swap capability on March 10, 2026, with implementation confirmed in the months that followed. The first highlighted use case was strkBTC, a shielded representation of Bitcoin on Starknet, which can now be swapped privately through Ekubo’s pools.
The design choice to route private and public swaps through the same liquidity pools avoids fragmenting liquidity into separate isolated pools, which has undermined previous DeFi privacy implementations. Public traders keep their deep liquidity; private traders get anonymity without paying a slippage premium for it.
What the integration does not change is Ekubo’s core architecture. The protocol’s concentrated liquidity model, its fee structure for public swaps, and its position in the Starknet ecosystem remain unchanged. The new code path runs through the ShieldedSwapRouter and the Obelysk-built contracts rather than touching Ekubo’s core pool contracts directly.
For traders on Starknet, shielded tokens like strkBTC need to be held in a compatible shielded balance before the private swap route becomes available. The swap itself then executes through Ekubo’s pools with the same price discovery and liquidity depth as any public trade, minus the identity footprint.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Starknet spustil nový rámec STRK20 Shieldnet, který chrání soukromí u 45 aktiv ERC-20 pomocí zero-knowledge proofů. Transakce se převádějí do šifrovaných poznámek a detaily lze selektivně zpřístupnit regulátorům.
Starknet just rolled out privacy protection for 45 ERC-20 assets through its new STRK20 framework, branded as Shieldnet. The system uses client-side zero-knowledge proofs to convert tokens into encrypted notes, making transaction details invisible to outside observers while still allowing selective disclosure for regulatory compliance.
How Shieldnet actually works The STRK20 framework operates on a note-based ZK system. When users interact with it, their assets are converted into encrypted notes that appear only as metadata on-chain. The sender, receiver, and transfer amounts are all hidden from public view.
This is fundamentally different from crypto mixers like the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash. Rather than pooling funds together to obscure their origins, Shieldnet enables selective lawful disclosure through encrypted viewing keys. Users can share these keys with regulators or auditors when required, revealing only the relevant transaction data while keeping everything else confidential.
The framework supports shielded transactions across DeFi applications, not just simple transfers. Protocols like AVNU and Ekubo are already integrated, meaning users can swap and provide liquidity with privacy features baked into the experience. Supported wallets include Xverse and Ready X.
The rollout timeline The STRK20 framework was first announced in March 2026, followed by a protocol upgrade tagged SHINOBI/v0.14.2 on April 21, 2026, which laid the technical groundwork. The first asset to go live under the framework was strkBTC, launched on May 12, 2026. USDC followed in June, and the full implementation covering 45 assets was completed by June 9, 2026.
Early engagement numbers look respectable for a brand-new privacy system. The privacy pool has processed more than 14,000 deposit transactions, with total value locked reaching approximately $350K shortly after launch.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Chybný cenový feed Pragma na Starknetu spustil u Vesu nepravidelnou likvidaci 47 pozic a zasáhl kolaterál v hodnotě 3 milionů USD. Vesu tvrdí, že jeho kontrakty fungovaly správně, a pracuje na obnově prostředků pro postižené uživatele.
Starknet lending protocol Vesu has reported that a faulty Pragma price feed triggered the abnormal liquidation of 47 positions holding $3 million in collateral on Sept. 4.
Summary
47 Vesu positions were liquidated across several pools during a two-minute oracle failure. $3 million in collateral was affected before the Pragma price feed corrected itself. Vesu said its contracts worked as programmed and contained no protocol vulnerability. Vesu and other Starknet organizations are trying to recover funds for affected users. Vesu traces $3M liquidation to Pragma price feed Vesu said in a Sept. 5 incident disclosure that the liquidations occurred between 04:08 and 04:10 UTC on Sept. 4 after an upstream price source operated by Pragma supplied incorrect data.
🚨 Update on the 4th September oracle incident
A faulty upstream Pragma price feed caused 47 positions and $3M of collateral to be irregularly liquidated across several Vesu pools between 04:08 and 04:10 UTC
The feed corrected itself within two minutes, and nothing has been…
— Vesu (@vesuxyz) September 4, 2026 During the two-minute incident, the faulty prices reached several Vesu liquidity pools and made 47 borrowing positions appear eligible for liquidation. Automated liquidators then removed approximately $3 million in collateral before the feed returned to the correct value.
According to the protocol, the price source corrected itself within two minutes and has operated normally since then. Vesu did not identify the affected assets or provide a pool-by-pool breakdown in its initial statement.
The company also did not disclose how far the incorrect prices differed from market rates, the amount of debt attached to the liquidated positions, or how much collateral liquidators retained. A technical report covering the incident is expected to provide more information about the affected markets and the sequence of on-chain transactions.
Pragma has since worked with the relevant organizations to deploy a fix addressing the source of the error, Vesu said. Liquidity pool curators suspended affected pools as a precaution, with Vesu expecting them to remove the restrictions after reviewing the fix.
Because Vesu uses isolated and curated lending pools, decisions on reopening individual markets rest with their curators. The initial update did not identify which curators had paused their pools or provide an exact timetable for restoring normal activity.
Vesu says its contracts contained no vulnerability Separating the incident from a smart contract exploit, Vesu said its contracts were “operating as designed” and did not contain a vulnerability. The protocol added that it had no contract patch to deploy because the liquidation engine responded to the prices it received.
In an overcollateralized lending market, a borrower deposits assets worth more than the value of a loan. The protocol uses an external price feed to measure the collateral ratio, and a liquidation may begin when that ratio falls below the pool’s required level.
Vesu attributed the Sept. 4 liquidations to bad inputs rather than faulty execution. Under its account, the contracts received incorrect collateral prices and processed the affected positions according to the rules already written into the protocol.
A July 2026 liquidation risk explainer from crypto.news described price data as the central input used to calculate a DeFi loan’s health factor. The report noted that stale or manipulated data can liquidate a healthy position or prevent an unsafe one from being closed.
Oracle dependence also extends beyond lending markets. An August 2026 report on blockchain oracles explained that smart contracts cannot independently read off-chain market prices, leaving them reliant on outside systems that collect, combine and publish data on-chain.
According to that report, an oracle normally handles data sourcing, aggregation, and on-chain delivery. A failure at any of the three stages can pass an inaccurate value to an otherwise functional smart contract, which may then complete a trade or liquidation based on the faulty input.
Recovery talks involve Starknet organizations Following the incident, Vesu said it began coordinating with Pragma, StarkWare, the Starknet Foundation, and the curators of the affected pools to recover funds collected through the liquidations.
The protocol has not yet explained how the recovery process will operate, how much of the $3 million remains recoverable, or whether liquidators have agreed to return any assets. Its statement also stopped short of announcing a guaranteed reimbursement amount or payment date.
For users with deposits in Vesu’s Earn product, the protocol advised keeping their positions open. Closing an Earn position before the recovery process is complete may remove the user’s eligibility for a refund, according to Vesu.
Borrowers whose positions were liquidated during the two-minute window were asked to open a support ticket through Vesu’s Discord server. The protocol did not specify what records users must submit, though wallet addresses and transaction details can identify affected positions on-chain.
Vesu’s response differs from an automatic reversal because blockchain transactions generally remain final after confirmation. Any restoration would therefore require recovered assets, voluntary returns from liquidators, protocol-controlled funds, or another compensation arrangement agreed upon by the parties. Vesu has not said which route it plans to use.
A comparable oracle-related event occurred on Aave in March 2026, when a stale parameter caused an estimated $26 million to $27 million in unintended wstETH liquidations. An August 2026 review of the incident reported that Aave later examined oracle update rates and fallback systems while using several oracle sources for major collateral types.
Vesu has not announced comparable changes to its oracle structure. Pragma’s root-cause fix was the only technical measure confirmed in the initial disclosure.
US users depend on Vesu’s recovery process For users in the United States, the incident involves a permissionless DeFi product rather than an insured bank account. The SEC’s Investor.gov website states that the FDIC insures deposits at eligible banks but does not protect securities or similar investments against a decline in value.
Vesu did not point to any government-backed protection for affected users. Instead, it directed them to its own support process and said the organizations involved were working to recover the collateral taken during the abnormal liquidations.
The protocol has not disclosed whether it restricts recovery by nationality or residence. Its instructions apply to users whose positions were liquidated during the identified window and to Earn depositors seeking to preserve possible refund eligibility.
At the network level, Vesu forms part of Starknet’s DeFi infrastructure. Starknet identified the lender as one of the protocols supporting its STRK20 privacy rollout in June 2026, alongside decentralized exchanges avnu and Ekubo and staking provider Endur.
Vesu said it will publish a complete technical report after its investigation, while affected borrowers can submit Discord support tickets, and Earn users have been told not to close their positions.
CREDI přináší na Starknet soukromé úvěrové trhy: šifrované transakce skrývají identitu dlužníků i podmínky obchodů, zatímco kryptografické důkazy dál ověřují správnost účtování. Integrace byla oznámena 20. srpna 2026.
Private credit is one of traditional finance’s least transparent corners. Borrowers don’t want their financing terms public. Lenders don’t want competitors knowing their book. And yet, on a public blockchain, every transaction is readable by anyone with a browser. CREDI thinks it has found a way around that contradiction.
The protocol, built by Credilabs, is bringing short-duration invoice and receivables financing onto Starknet using encrypted transactions that keep borrower identities and deal terms confidential while still allowing anyone to verify that the math checks out.
How the privacy layer actually works The core problem with putting credit markets on a public chain is that transparency, usually a feature, becomes a liability. A supplier borrowing against invoices doesn’t want the world to know who their clients are or what payment terms they’ve negotiated. CREDI’s answer is to use Starknet’s STRK20 framework to encrypt transaction data and maintain confidential balances.
The trick is that confidentiality doesn’t mean unverifiability. Cryptographic proofs let anyone confirm that collateralization ratios hold, that advance rates are correctly applied, and that vault accounting is accurate, without ever seeing the underlying borrower data.
Starknet announced the integration on August 20, 2026, and CREDI is part of the foundation’s inaugural Proof of Privacy cohort, a select group of projects building out the network’s privacy tooling.
The settlement architecture adds another layer of protection against default. Borrower repayments via Visa settlements flow directly into the vault rather than passing through the borrower’s hands first. Removing that intermediary step means borrowers can’t accidentally or deliberately redirect funds before lenders get paid.
The numbers behind the product CREDI isn’t a whitepaper project. Its Ethereum-based operation has been running since May 2024, and the track record so far is notable for an early-stage DeFi credit protocol.
The platform has financed more than 1,710 invoices totaling over $4 million, with an average advance rate of 69.78%. That means lenders are typically fronting roughly 70 cents on every dollar of invoice value, with the remainder acting as a buffer against non-payment. Zero defaults have been recorded across that portfolio.
The realized yield across the financed book sits at 29.3%. The loans themselves are short-dated, with maturities capped at 60 days, so capital turns over quickly and risk doesn’t accumulate over long horizons.
The $CREDI token functions as the yield-bearing instrument. Holders accrue interest daily with automatic reinvestment, and the token can be staked for terms ranging from 3 to 24 months with a fixed annual interest rate of 12% to 18%, backed by the underlying credit portfolios. The minimum entry point for staking is $10,000 USDC, and an OTC secondary market provides an exit route for investors who need liquidity before their term ends.
The addressable market CREDI is pitching into is large. Invoice and receivables financing is a subset of the broader private credit universe, which the protocol pegs at $1.75 trillion globally.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Starknet dočasně vypnul Bitcoin bridging po bezpečnostním incidentu u Atomiq. Uživatelské prostředky zůstaly v bezpečí a náprava má přijít během několika dní.
If you wanted to move Bitcoin onto Starknet today, you’re out of luck. Atomiq, the infrastructure provider powering BTC-to-Starknet swaps, yanked all of its swap routes offline on August 20 after what it described as sophisticated AI-assisted security attacks targeting its operations.
The good news: no user funds were lost. The less good news: one of Starknet’s key Bitcoin on-ramps is now a dead end until a replacement integration goes live, which Starknet says should happen within days.
What happened and why funds are safe Atomiq’s role in the Starknet ecosystem was straightforward but critical. It facilitated zero-slippage swaps between native BTC (including Lightning Network transactions) and Starknet-based assets like strkBTC.
Starknet moved quickly to clarify the damage, or rather the lack of it. The swaps relied on a trustless escrow model secured by Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus. In practical terms, that means the security of user funds didn’t depend on Atomiq staying online. The cryptographic guarantees were baked into the protocol layer, not the application layer.
Users who had swaps in progress aren’t stranded either. Atomiq’s web application remains accessible specifically so people can claim refunds on past transactions. The swap service is dead, but the refund counter is still open.
The replacement plan Starknet confirmed it is actively preparing a new integration to restore Bitcoin bridging capabilities. The timeline is aggressive: days, not weeks or months.
Starknet has positioned itself as a privacy-focused Layer 2 built on zero-knowledge rollup technology, where Bitcoin holders can access DeFi applications with enhanced privacy guarantees. The new integration is expected to include enhancements over the previous Atomiq-powered system, including existing swap services such as zero-slippage Bitcoin transactions and support for the strkBTC token.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Starknet už umožňuje přechod na kvantově odolné podpisy bez hard forku a bez změny adresy. Síť navíc staví na STARKs, které nejsou závislé na eliptických křivkách.
Skip to contentHow Starknet Can Upgrade for Quantum Resistance
Two weeks ago, a wallet that no quantum computer could ever break made a transfer on Starknet.
The transfer cost about six cents and settled on the mainnet, in public. You can look it up on the block explorer right now.
The account behind it is experimental and unaudited, built for research rather than production use. Still, real value moved through a signature no quantum computer can forge.
That was possible because a Starknet account sets its own rules for which signatures it will accept. This wallet switched from the elliptic-curve signature the rest of crypto relies on to a quantum-resistant one on its own, with no fork, no coordinated migration, and no new address.
That transaction is a useful place to start if you want to understand how Starknet can be upgraded for quantum-resistance.
The clock is already running
Most people in crypto know the threat in outline. A large enough quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm breaks the elliptic-curve cryptography that guards nearly every wallet in crypto, And the keys that keep your funds yours stop being secret.
What surprises people is that the quantum computer doesn’t have to exist yet for you to be exposed to it. An adversary can record encrypted blockchain data today and sit on it until the hardware catches up. The industry calls this harvest now, decrypt later.
So the useful question is how much work stands between a chain and the day that hardware arrives. Answering it means knowing where the danger actually sits.
Why almost no chain could do what that wallet did
A blockchain has two separate exposures to quantum.
The first is the account layer. That is the signature authorising a transaction from your wallet, and it is the one most people picture when they think about quantum risk.
The second is the verification layer. The cryptography the network uses to prove every transaction and balance is valid, the proof system sitting underneath the whole chain. Most people never think about it, and that is exactly the problem.
A quantum computer threatens both, because most chains use elliptic curves in both places. Fix one and neglect the other, and you are still exposed. A quantum-safe wallet on a chain whose proof system can be forged is a steel lock bolted to a cardboard box.
This is why so few networks actually qualify. Bitcoin and Ethereum secure accounts with elliptic-curve signatures wired straight into the protocol, and most zk-rollups make it worse, because the SNARK proof systems they run on are built on elliptic curves too. Fixing them means rebuilding core cryptography from the inside, and on the account side it also means a coordinated migration where every holder has to move funds to a new address type before a deadline.
Starknet begins somewhere else.
Starknet’s Unfair Advantage Both of Starknet’s advantages come from design choices made years before quantum became a headline.
Start with the verification layer. Starknet is built on STARKs, which prove computation using hash functions rather than elliptic curves. There is no known quantum attack that breaks a hash function. The best one, Grover’s algorithm, only speeds up brute-force guessing, and you cancel it out with a slightly larger hash. The layer that secures all value on Starknet was never quantum-vulnerable in the first place. That property is built into how STARKs work.
Now the account layer, which is where that six-cent transfer from a wallet comes from. On Starknet, every account is a smart contract. No signature scheme is hardwired into the protocol. Each account decides which signatures it accepts, in its own code.
That single design choice changes everything about a quantum migration:
A wallet can verify post-quantum signatures, because verification is just contract logic.No hard fork is required to adopt them.No network-wide migration is forced. Accounts upgrade one at a time, on each owner’s schedule.Accounts can swap their logic in place, keeping the same address and the same funds, so protecting yourself now does not lock you into a standard that may still change.Working code already exists, Falcon-512 is a post-quantum signature scheme on NIST’s standardization track. S2morrow demonstrated a working Falcon-512 account written in Cairo. OpenZeppelin published deployable versions, and built the account behind that mainnet transfer.
Adopting it took no fork and no permission. If something better than Falcon comes along, moving to it will work the same way.
The rest of the roadOn June 30, StarkWare published a roadmap to bring the whole network in line, in three phases.
Phase one secures all new activity. It replaces the last elliptic-curve-dependent hashing in places like state commitments and address derivation, so new transactions and contracts run on post-quantum foundations by default. This phase is already underway.
Phase two brings existing contracts forward, with tooling that lets them adopt quantum-safe storage without breaking their interfaces or forcing painful manual migrations.
Phase three moves in step with Ethereum. Two surfaces are shared with the base layer, the bridge that carries messages and assets between Starknet and Ethereum, and the data availability layer where Starknet posts its data. Both still rely on elliptic-curve cryptography inherited from Ethereum.
What matters is how much is left above that shared dependency. Ethereum’s own long-term roadmap points toward the same hash-based, STARK-friendly cryptography Starknet already runs on, so when Ethereum migrates, Starknet arrives with less remaining work than other major layer 2s.
Starknet: a head start you can usePicture the day a real quantum computer finally arrives. On most chains, your protection is somebody else’s decision, and you wait on a protocol fork and a governance deadline to move your funds to safety. On Starknet, that upgrade was a choice you could already make, on your own timeline, with the address you always used. For institutions treating quantum readiness as a compliance question, the same property means safety on a schedule they control rather than inherit.
Read the full roadmap and follow the progress at quantum.starkware.co.
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SuperVega has launched its public beta on Starknet, bringing options trading to the layer-2 network and giving users a way to place directional bets on cryptocurrency prices. The platform allows traders to profit from hitting specific price targets on digital assets, a feature that slots neatly into Starknet’s broader push into derivatives infrastructure.
Starknet already has Carmine Options serving as the primary options trading protocol on the network, offering European-style options on assets like ETH, STRK, and wBTC.
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What SuperVega is building SuperVega’s approach centers on letting users “profit from price targets on cryptocurrencies,” which suggests a structure closer to binary or target-based options rather than the traditional European-style contracts that Carmine already offers.
The platform is currently in public beta. No specific metrics like total value locked, trading volume, or fee structures have been publicly disclosed.
Starknet’s derivatives ambitions On May 12, 2026, the network saw the launch of strkBTC, a privacy-enhanced wrapped Bitcoin asset that leverages Starknet’s growing privacy infrastructure. That launch came alongside broader developments in the STRK20 privacy framework.
Liquid staking features were integrated into the network as recently as July 29, 2026, adding another layer of composability that derivatives protocols can build on top of.
What this means for traders and investors SuperVega is a beta product with no track record, no publicly available audit information, and no performance history.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Sats Terminal spustil na Starknet BTC zajištěné půjčky v USDC s čistým ročním výnosem kolem -2,04 % při LTV 50 %. Odměny ve STRK mají pokrýt náklady na úroky.
Getting paid to borrow money sounds like a financial fever dream. Sats Terminal just made it real on Starknet.
The BTC lending platform announced its integration with Starknet on July 22, enabling users to borrow USDC against their Bitcoin collateral through the Vesu lending protocol at a net APR of approximately -2.04% at a 50% loan-to-value ratio. In English: borrowers walk away with more money than they owe in interest, courtesy of STRK token rewards that more than cover the borrowing costs.
How negative interest actually works Negative APRs aren’t magic. They’re subsidized. Starknet has allocated at least 100 million STRK tokens toward its rewards program, and those incentives are what make the economics work for borrowers.
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Here’s the math on a concrete example. A borrower putting up 1 BTC as collateral can expect to earn roughly $1,997 annually from STRK rewards while paying approximately $1,344 in interest. That nets out to about $653 in the borrower’s pocket, just for taking out a loan.
The maximum loan-to-value ratio through Vesu can stretch up to 86%, though the juiciest negative rates come at the more conservative 50% LTV tier.
The integration runs through Vesu, a lending protocol on Starknet that positions itself as capital-efficient. Sats Terminal acts as the front-end interface, connecting Bitcoin holders to USDC liquidity without requiring them to sell their underlying BTC position. The loans are non-custodial, meaning users maintain control of their assets throughout the process.
Sats Terminal’s growing footprint The platform has onboarded over 100,000 unique wallets since its inception. Its backers include yzilabs, Coinbase Ventures, and Draper VC. Tim Draper himself highlighted the platform back in January 2026.
Co-founder Stanislav Havryliuk and his team have been building toward this kind of cross-chain integration. Moving onto Starknet, a ZK-rollup scaling solution originally designed for Ethereum, represents a bet that Bitcoin-native users want access to DeFi infrastructure beyond the Bitcoin network itself.
What this means for investors Negative rates funded by token rewards only work as long as the reward tokens maintain their value and the incentive programs keep running. STRK rewards that generate $1,997 annually today could generate significantly less if the token price drops or if Starknet decides to redirect those 100 million tokens elsewhere.
The 86% maximum LTV deserves attention from a risk perspective. High LTV ratios in volatile markets can lead to cascading liquidations. Conservative borrowers sticking to the 50% tier have meaningful buffer. Those pushing toward the ceiling are betting that Bitcoin’s price won’t move against them fast enough to trigger a margin call.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Starknet spustil STRK20, nativní rámec ochrany soukromí pro on-chain aktiva, který umožňuje skrýt zůstatky ERC-20, soukromé převody i swapy. První podporovaná aktiva jsou strkBTC a USDC.
Privacy on a public blockchain has always felt like a contradiction in terms. Every transaction is visible, every wallet balance is readable, and your entire financial history is one block explorer search away from being an open book. Starknet thinks it has a fix.
On June 9, 2026, Starknet launched STRK20, a native privacy framework built into its Ethereum Layer-2 ZK rollup architecture. The system lets users shield any ERC-20 token balance, execute private transfers, and run private swaps, all without spinning up a separate privacy coin or fragmenting liquidity into isolated pools.
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How STRK20 actually works The framework runs on a note-based privacy pool: instead of broadcasting your token balance to the entire network, your assets are converted into encrypted “notes” that only you can open and spend. The proofs themselves are generated client-side using zero-knowledge cryptography, which means your device does the heavy lifting locally before anything touches the chain. On-chain, the network only verifies that a valid proof exists, not what the underlying transaction contains.
The first asset to use STRK20 was strkBTC, which went live on the framework following Starknet’s v0.14.2 protocol upgrade in April 2026. USDC support followed on June 25, 2026, extending privacy capabilities to one of crypto’s most widely used stablecoins. The system is designed so any ERC-20 token on Starknet can plug in without requiring separate liquidity. Supported wallets at launch include Xverse, AVNU, and Circle integrations.
The compliance piece, and why it matters STRK20 includes an encrypted viewing-key mechanism that allows users to selectively disclose transaction history to auditors, regulators, or legal counterparties without making that information public. Encrypted viewing keys can be held by third-party auditors, meaning a court order or compliance request can unlock a specific user’s transaction history without compromising anyone else’s privacy on the network.
What this means for Starknet’s competitive position Starknet’s rollout of STRK20 follows a deliberate build-up that began in March 2026 with initial privacy-related feature introductions, accelerating through the April 2026 full privacy engine implementation, and culminating in the June mainnet launch.
Starknet has signaled that upcoming phases will expand STRK20 into private lending products and cross-chain functionality.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
PANews July 12 news, Token Unlocks data shows that tokens such as DBR, ARB, YZY will see large unlocks next week, including:
deBridge (DBR) will unlock approximately 618 million tokens on July 17 at 8:00 am Beijing time, representing about 11.4% of the circulating supply, worth about $10.1 million;
Arbitrum (ARB) will unlock approximately 92.65 million tokens on July 16 at 9:00 pm Beijing time, representing about 1.65% of the circulating supply, worth about $8.5 million;
YZY (YZY) will unlock approximately 20.83 million tokens on July 17 at 11:00 am Beijing time, representing about 4.1% of the circulating supply, worth about $6.1 million;
Starknet (STRK) will unlock approximately 127 million tokens on July 15 at 8:00 am Beijing time, representing about 3.74% of the circulating supply, worth about $3.9 million;
Sei (SEI) will unlock approximately 55.56 million tokens on July 15 at 8:00 pm Beijing time, representing about 0.91% of the circulating supply, worth about $2.8 million.
Starknet 8. července spustí na mainnetu verzi v0.14.3, která zavádí dynamické gas poplatky navázané na cenu STRK a snižuje cílový gas na blok o 30 %. Upgrade má zrychlit síť a zkrátit latenci transakcí.
Starknet is rolling out its v0.14.3 upgrade to mainnet on July 8, bringing a suite of changes designed to make the Layer 2 network cheaper, faster, and harder to break. The headline features: dynamic gas fees that adjust to STRK’s token price, a 30% cut to target gas per block, and a quiet but meaningful shift toward quantum-resistant cryptography.
For a network whose native token is currently trading around $0.03 and whose total value locked sits at roughly $204 million, this is less a victory lap and more a necessary step to stay competitive in an increasingly crowded L2 landscape.
What’s actually changing The most consequential piece of the upgrade is SNIP-35, a proposal that introduces dynamic L2 gas base fee adjustments. Instead of static minimum gas fees, the network will now automatically recalibrate fees based on two variables: the fluctuating price of the STRK token and real-time network congestion.
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The second major change involves block architecture. Starknet v0.14.3 reduces the target L2 gas per block by 30% while keeping the maximum block size unchanged. The result is smaller but more frequent blocks, which translates directly into shorter block production times and reduced transaction latency.
The upgrade also introduces Keccak support for client-side proving and transitions specific operations from Pedersen hashing to BLAKE hashing. The BLAKE switch is explicitly aimed at quantum resistance.
Breaking changes and developer migration Starknet v0.14.3 deprecates RPC v0.8, meaning any developer or application still relying on that version needs to migrate before the switch flips.
StarkWare, the primary development team behind Starknet, has been providing migration guidance ahead of the July 8 date. The testnet activation happened in June, following multiple delays from earlier targets like June 22, giving developers a window to test their applications against the new protocol.
The mainnet migration itself is expected to incur approximately 8 minutes of downtime.
What this means for investors STRK trading at around $0.03 puts it in a challenging position. The dynamic fee adjustment mechanism ties gas fees to STRK’s market price, creating a feedback loop where network revenue remains somewhat stable in dollar terms regardless of token volatility.
Watch the TVL numbers in the two weeks following July 8. If locked value climbs meaningfully from the current $204 million, it suggests the fee and latency improvements are translating into actual user behavior changes.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
StarkWare zveřejnil třífázový kvantově odolný plán pro Starknet a tvrdí, že průmysl nemá omluvu zůstávat zranitelný vůči budoucím kvantovým útokům. Základem je kryptografie STARK, kterou označuje za inherentně odolnou vůči kvantovým hrozbám.
Zero-knowledge scaling company StarkWare has released a quantum-resistant roadmap for Starknet, arguing that other chains will remain exposed if the industry is “too stubborn or stupid” to act.
In an announcement on Tuesday, Starknet framed its three-phased quantum-resistant roadmap as evidence that the crypto industry has no excuse for remaining vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks.
“The tried-and-tested cryptography exists to secure every crypto key in the world, if necessary changes are made, and the only reason anyone will remain vulnerable is if heads remain buried in the sand,” said Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO at StarkWare.
Efforts to quantum-proof blockchains are accelerating as some researchers warn that quantum computing could outpace blockchain’s defenses and cryptographically relevant quantum machines could be ready before 2030.
The Bitcoin community remains divided on how to approach securing old coins against the quantum threat, while other networks are forging ahead with quantum roadmaps.
Ben-Sasson said Starknet can become resistant to quantum attacks by “seizing on its architecture advantage.” Its underlying cryptography is zero-knowledge STARK (Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge) proofs, which are “inherently post-quantum safe.”
Ben-Sasson said that if Starknet can become quantum-resistant by “seizing on this cryptography,” then anyone else can do it by choosing the right cryptography. “We need to be nimble in blockchain and crypto,” he said.
“There’s an awful irony in the notion that a young industry born from rejecting the way things have always been done is stalling and procrastinating about making changes for quantum security.”He added that crypto has an “elliptical illusion,” distorting reality around elliptic-curve cryptography, the current standard for securing blockchains.
Believing that this will be quantum resistant is “false confidence” that is leaving the industry “dangerously complacent,” he said.
Some migration problems are genuinely hard, involving technical trade-offs, governance decisions, and dependencies that no single team controls, he added, but said: “difficulty is not an excuse for delay.”
“The crypto industry shouldn’t need wake-up calls from the White House or anyone else. We should all be acting and seizing on the best cryptography that exists.”Starknet’s three-phase roadmap The first phase involves swapping out some of its current security math (Pedersen hashing) for quantum-resistant versions and adding quantum-resistant signatures.
Phase two focuses on migration tooling that quietly upgrades existing smart contracts to the new quantum-safe standard, without forcing developers to manually rebuild apps.
Phase three covers dependencies that Starknet cannot resolve alone, which largely depend on Ethereum’s quantum upgrade roadmap.
Circle, Ethereum, Solana, Tezos and Algorand have all proposed quantum-proof roadmaps, while the Bitcoin community remains at loggerheads.
Magazine: Bitcoin slides to $58K, XRP hits $1 but onchain data promising: Market Moves
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Na Starknet přichází STRK20, které přidává soukromé převody USDC a shieldované zůstatky bez změny standardu ERC-20. Soukromé transakce jsou zároveň auditovatelné přes viewing key.
Skip to contentHow STRK20 brings confidential stablecoin payments to DeFi
Stablecoins have become the unit of account for onchain finance. They settle trades, move treasury, pay contributors, and back most of the liquidity that DeFi runs on. But every one of those transfers carries a cost that rarely gets named: it is permanently, irreversibly public.
On Starknet, this has changed with privacy features for USDC, built with STRK20. With STRK20, Starknet’s native privacy framework, USDC on Starknet gains confidential capabilities: shieldable, privately transferable, and usable across DeFi, without leaving the standard ERC-20 behind.
The transparency problem with blockchain transactionsSend stablecoins on any chain and you broadcast the full transaction to anyone watching: the sender, the recipient, the exact amount, and the timestamp, all written to a public ledger forever. For a base layer that’s a feature. For the entity actually moving the money, it’s an exposure.
A treasury rebalance reveals position size and intent. A market-making wallet leaks its strategy with every fill. Counterparties can map your entire balance history before you’ve signed a single agreement, and MEV searchers can reconstruct your behaviour from a single linked address. The transparency that makes the network trustworthy makes its most important asset hostile to anyone who needs discretion, which is to say most enterprises, most institutions, and a fair number of individuals who simply expect their finances to be their own.
Workarounds exist, but they fragment liquidity, demand new tokens, or wrap privacy in a separate app users have to trust and migrate to. None of that is the same thing as privacy on the asset you already hold.
Introducing USDC privacy features with STRK20STRK20 is a privacy framework for all ERC-20 tokens on Starknet. It lets any ERC-20 support shielded balances and private transfers without altering the token contract and without asking wallets or apps to rebuild from scratch. USDC is among the first stablecoins on Starknet to have these privacy capabilities.
The model is:
– Shield USDC to hold a private balance, invisible to outside observers on the public ledger.
– Unshield at any time to return to standard, fully transparent ERC-20 behaviour.
– Transfer shielded USDC privately, with asset type, amount, and participating wallets all hidden from outside view.
Crucially, this is privacy at the protocol level, not an app integration. It’s the same USDC, in the same wallet, private when you need it to be and visible when you don’t. There’s no second token, no bridge into a walled garden, no duplicated balance to reconcile.
How it worksShielding moves USDC into a privacy pool where balances and transfers are protected by zero-knowledge proofs rather than published in the clear. A private transfer proves the transaction is valid (funds exist, the sender is authorised, nothing is double-spent) without revealing what moved, how much, or between whom.
Proof generation happens operator-side; verification happens at the sequencer level, using the same infrastructure Starknet already uses to prove its own blocks. Unshielding reverses the process, returning USDC to the public ledger whenever the user chooses.
And it won’t price privacy as a tax. Unlike approaches that skim a percentage of transaction value, STRK20 charges a fixed fee per transaction, closer to a gas fee than a toll. That flat cost is what makes private stablecoin payments viable at real volume rather than only for the largest transfers.
Confidential DeFi on Ready X and XversePrivacy that strands your assets isn’t very useful, so STRK20 is built for assets to stay composable. From the privacy pool, users will be able to swap in and out of USDC confidentially on Ready and XVerse wallets
That means you can hold a private balance and still participate in onchain markets without re-exposing yourself the moment you want to do something with it. These are the first integrations, not the last; more DeFi venues will follow as the framework rolls out.
Compliance architecture and viewing keysPrivacy and auditability are usually framed as a trade-off. STRK20 is designed to deliver both, by building compliance rather than bolting it on.
When a user shields, they automatically register a viewing key. The key is scoped to that user and that user alone. If a legitimate legal request is made, a designated third-party auditing entity can use it to reconstruct *that specific user’s* transaction history, and nothing else. No other participant in the pool is affected, and access sits with authorised bodies under legal process, never with counterparties, observers, or the users themselves peering into one another.
The result is privacy for users by default, with a clean, scoped path to auditability for regulators when the law requires it.
Why StarknetNone of this is incidental to Starknet; it’s a direct consequence of what the network was built on. Years of zero-knowledge research and engineering by StarkWare produced a STARK-based proving and verification stack efficient enough to make private payments both cheap and scalable, rather than a premium feature reserved for whales.
That same efficiency is why STRK20 can support complex private payments at scale where other privacy designs hit a wall. And it isn’t experimental: verification runs on the very infrastructure Starknet has used to prove its own blocks in production for over five years. Shielded USDC inherits that foundation.
Stablecoins gave onchain finance a unit of account. STRK20 is set to give it a private one.
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Confidential stablecoin payments are here on Starknet. Follow the rollout and get the technical details at strk20.starknet.io
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Starknet zveřejnil návod, jak prostřednictvím kompatibilních peněženek zapnout soukromé DeFi přes STRK20. Uživatelé mohou skrýt aktiva ERC-20 a obchodovat, půjčovat i stakovat bez veřejného zveřejnění detailů.
Starknet just made private DeFi about as easy as toggling on dark mode. The Ethereum layer 2 network has published a walkthrough for accessing its privacy features through compatible wallets, turning what used to be a multi-step cryptographic headache into something approaching a one-click experience.
The guide centers on Starknet’s STRK20 privacy framework, which went live around June 9. It allows users to shield ERC-20 assets directly from wallets like Xverse and Ready, then interact with DeFi protocols, including swaps, lending, and staking, without broadcasting every detail of their financial life to the entire blockchain.
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How the shielding actually works Starknet’s approach lets users convert standard tokens into shielded versions through their wallet interface. The framework is designed to maintain composability with public liquidity pools, meaning private transactions can tap into existing liquidity rather than being confined to isolated ecosystems where shielded assets could only interact with other shielded assets.
Transactions using the privacy features settle in under five seconds at low costs, according to Starknet. That’s roughly the same speed as a standard Starknet transaction, meaning the privacy layer doesn’t introduce meaningful friction.
strkBTC and the Bitcoin angle Starknet launched strkBTC back in May, a shielded representation of Bitcoin on its network. strkBTC lets Bitcoin holders participate in Starknet’s DeFi ecosystem without their BTC positions being publicly visible. Both Xverse and Ready wallets support one-click shielding and unshielding of strkBTC alongside other assets, making the process uniform regardless of the underlying token.
The compliance question The STRK20 framework includes compliance features built into its architecture: viewing keys are encrypted for an integrity council, creating a mechanism that blends user privacy with regulatory requirements. This design allows transactions to be private by default yet auditable under specific conditions, occupying a middle ground that could work for compliance-conscious players.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
StarkWare představil Private KYC, zero-knowledge systém na STRK20, privacy vrstvě Starknetu, který umožní ověřit například věk nad 18 let bez předání pasu centrálnímu ověřovateli. Demo míří na vlády a instituce, ne na ostrý produkt.
@StarkWareLtd has unveiled a zero-knowledge identity system designed to let users pass a KYC check without surrendering their personal data to a central verifier. The prototype, called Private KYC, is built on STRK20, @Starknet's privacy layer, and works by flipping the logic of how identity verification is typically done.
How it works A user scans their passport using their phone's NFC chip. That identity data is then encrypted and bound to their own Starknet account rather than stored on a third-party server. When a KYC check is required, the system generates a zero-knowledge proof of just the fact that matters, such as confirming the user is over 18, while name, date of birth, and document number remain sealed. No central verifier holds a copy of the document, so there is no database to breach.
STRK20, which launched in early June, introduces zero-knowledge privacy features for ERC-20 tokens, letting users shield balances and make private transfers without moving assets to a separate privacy chain. The technical architecture relies on client-side zero-knowledge proofs built with StarkWare's Stwo prover and Cairo programming language. Private KYC extends that same infrastructure into identity verification.
Targeting a well-documented problem The timing of the demo is pointed. A KYC store becomes a data honeypot the moment it concentrates identity records someone else wants, and that concentration is something the rulebook compels, not something a control choice creates. The scale of recent incidents makes the case plainly: IDmerit, disclosed in February 2026, exposed a data set running to roughly 1 billion records, including approximately 203 million US records. Unlike traditional passwords or credit card numbers, biometric data cannot be changed if compromised, posing long-term security risks. If fingerprints or iris patterns are stolen, the victim is permanently vulnerable to identity theft.
StarkWare's architecture sidesteps this problem by design. Because no raw document is ever handed to a verifier, there is no archive to steal. StarkWare chief executive Eli Ben-Sasson has said zero-knowledge systems could allow future investigations to request narrower information, though the approach has not yet faced broad regulatory testing, and institutions will still need to assess its legal, security, and operational controls before adoption.
For now, Private KYC is a demonstration pitched at government and institutional audiences, not a live product. Whether regulators will accept a ZK proof as a substitute for a stored document copy remains an open question. But as centralized identity databases continue to attract attackers, the architectural argument for an alternative is only getting stronger.
Sources:
Starknet: Make ERC-20 Tokens Private with STRK20
Finextra: The KYC Data Honeypot Is a Retention Mandate, Not a Security Failure
Fincrime Central: IDMerit data breach, 1 billion records exposed
