Analysis of the Differences and Connections between STARKs, StarkEx, and StarkNet

Original Title: "Can't Tell the Difference? What Are STARKs, StarkEx, and StarkNet?"

Author: StarkNet Intern

Compiled by: Kxp, Rhythm BlockBeats

This article is organized based on the views of StarkNet Intern on social media, and Rhythm BlockBeats has translated it as follows:

Summary:

1. STARKs prove the integrity of on-chain computation, enabling scalability.
2. StarkEx is a scaling engine for specific applications.
3. StarkNet is a permissionless Layer 2 network.

STARKs

In the STARK scheme, only one proof needs to be generated, and the computation results can be verified in a few simple steps.

With STARKs, larger computations can be performed off-chain, reducing the computational load required for verification on the blockchain. With just a few on-chain operations, verifiers can validate large-scale off-chain computations.

STARKs solutions can combine, compute, and verify thousands of blockchain transactions with a single STARK proof, distributing the processing costs across all transactions in a batch, ensuring the security of Ethereum while lowering gas fees.

The benefit of low computational costs is that it facilitates the construction of new types of applications on-chain, improving user experience, reducing gas costs, and ensuring the security of Ethereum.

StarkEx

StarkWare provides two solutions for Ethereum scalability: StarkEx and StarkNet.

StarkEx offers a permissioned, application-specific scaling solution. With StarkEx, the costs of off-chain computation will significantly decrease. STARK proofs are generated off-chain to verify execution, covering 12,000 to 500,000 transactions. Meanwhile, STARK verifiers can validate the proof on-chain.

Each transaction is verified only once, and the gas costs allocated to each transaction are remarkably low.

You can find applications like dYdX (perpetual trading), Immutable and Sorare (NFT minting and trading), DeversiFi (spot trading), and Celer (DeFi pools) on StarkEx.

To meet market and customer demands, StarkEx is undergoing scaling.

StarkNet

StarkNet is a permissionless Layer 2 network where anyone can deploy smart contracts.

The ecosystem of StarkNet is similar to Ethereum, where any contract can interact with any other contract on StarkNet, and protocols can be freely combined. Additionally, the asynchronous messaging feature allows StarkNet to communicate with Ethereum contracts.

StarkNet's sequencer can batch process transactions, unlike StarkEx, where applications submit transactions. Currently, StarkNet's sequencer is operated by StarkWare, with plans for decentralization in the next steps.

Once applications deploy Cairo contracts, no additional operator infrastructure is needed. StarkNet will support the availability of Rollup data, meaning that Rollup state and STARK proofs will be written to Ethereum together.

Developers on StarkNet are building applications, tools, and infrastructure, with functionalities like DeFi, gaming, voting, and AI already operational on the Testnet. Moreover, StarkNet has established developer tools such as block explorers, local testing environments, and SDKs in several languages.

On the Shamans platform, you can freely propose improvements, new features, and optimal methods.

Conclusion

Both StarkEx and StarkNet are STARK-based scaling solutions, each offering scalability, low costs, and security, with different operational parameters. For StarkEx, an independent and compatible API application may be the most suitable choice.

For protocols that need to interact synchronously with other protocols or require more features than StarkEx offers, using StarkNet may be the better option.

STARKs have fundamentally changed applications on Ethereum, while StarkEx and StarkNet have also created more possibilities for blockchain applications.