Bitcoin in the left hand, Ethereum in the right hand: Starknet is building a new cornerstone of the digital world

Translation and proofreading: Starknet Chinese Community

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• Introducing STARK proof technology into the Bitcoin network to significantly expand the application scenarios of Bitcoin
• Make Ethereum's digital commons more inclusive
• Advantages of flexible calls to Ethereum and Bitcoin

A financial system that needs to be reshaped

The Starknet Foundation is committed to building a world where power is shared, creative and paid, and everyone has opportunities. As Starknet L2 gradually becomes the first protocol to support both Bitcoin and Ethereum settlement, it is necessary to talk about this vision: how this vision leads us to this day; why we think the Bitcoin network can help us achieve this vision.

The limitations of the current digital world are obvious: funds, data and power are concentrated in the hands of a few people, and most people have difficulty in obtaining opportunities and participation, which makes the entire Internet lack diversity, creativity and innovative vitality. This is not the original intention of the Internet. But just like the development trajectory of many things, we often choose to turn a blind eye to problems because we are accustomed to the status quo, and we will not be surprised to see the problem when there is a crack in the system.

Digital Gold Rise

The 2008 financial crisis was exactly the moment of such a system collapse. We have seen the limitations of the traditional financial system at a heavy cost: the inability to establish absolute trust in financial institutions, and at the same time we realize that we urgently need a mechanism that allows the whole people to control their own assets. So, Bitcoin came into being.

Bitcoin was launched in 2009, opening a new era of finance that has been long-conceived but has not been realized. For the first time, we have a truly global monetary system of circulation - no need for intermediaries, no traditional bank accounts, and free from government intervention and policy supervision. This community-driven monetary system is open to everyone regardless of wealth, social status or nationality differences.

Just like many emerging technologies, Bitcoin encountered technical bottlenecks and negative impacts caused by malicious participants in the early stages, and the dual constraints affected the popularity of Bitcoin. Slow transaction speed, complex user experience, limited token usage scenarios, and early labeling of "mainly used for illegal activities" have all become obstacles to the development of Bitcoin. Therefore, although Bitcoin has always been well-known to the public, it has never been able to break through the mainstream market and unleash its full potential to change the world.

The birth of global public infrastructure

Six years after Bitcoin was launched, another important player in the blockchain field came into being. Unlike Bitcoin, which simply focuses on monetary attributes, Ethereum aims to build a global public infrastructure platform where people can create various decentralized applications from monetary systems to identity authentication and governance mechanisms. In a sense, Ethereum is a global computer. However, like Bitcoin, Ethereum was initially limited by its own technical bottlenecks: complex user experience, new conceptual frameworks, and brand new programming languages ​​all limited the early popularity of Ethereum.

To this day, although there are many L1, L2 and L3 emerging in the market, Bitcoin and Ethereum are still the largest and most influential projects in the Web3 field, and are also the key force that is most promising to popularize this world-changing technology to everyone. And this is where Starknet comes in.

Realize Web3 scale

Although Starknet was originally deployed in Ethereum, it was not just for Ethereum. Starknet aims to leverage STARK proof technology to provide scaling solutions for any blockchain, creating a secure and trustworthy digital world through full verifiability. From the beginning of the project, we have imagined that this possibility also applies to the Bitcoin network. After years of research and development and exploration, we are now able to put this vision into practice.

Starknet is building the infrastructure needed and building a corresponding partnership, which not only marks a huge improvement, but is also exciting enough. But perhaps even more exciting is the new possibilities this step will bring and its importance to the entire digital world.

New cornerstone of the digital world

By enabling developers to use the same set of code to build applications that can complete settlements on the Bitcoin and Ethereum network at the same time, we will significantly expand the application scenarios of Bitcoin and make Ethereum's digital commons more inclusive through faster transactions, higher scalability and lower costs. For the first time, developers have obtained the right to choose between the two mainstream blockchains - they can flexibly call the advantages of Ethereum and Bitcoin according to the specific application scenario.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision was to build a digital peer-to-peer payment system that could run at scale without centralized institutions, but it has not been fully realized to this day. By introducing STARK Proof Technology into the Bitcoin Network, we are helping to fully realize this technology blueprint. This will trigger a huge change in financial inclusion and inclusion, open up new markets, and lay a solid foundation for completely reshaping the digital world. All this is not only highly consistent with Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision, but also the ideal that the Starknet Foundation has always pursued.

Today, we are at the forefront of this exciting change, and Starknet is leading the way.