Bitcoin has empowered millions of people around the world to reclaim control over their assets and sovereignty. Yet most Bitcoin today sits static in wallets and exchanges because the network A. doesn’t scale and B. doesn’t natively support advanced actions beyond buying, selling, and transferring. By settling on Bitcoin in addition to Ethereum, Starknet will lift both of those restrictions to help unleash Bitcoin’s full potential.
How does Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin feel about this move? Or the two Bitcoin OGs Dan Held (GP at Asymmetric) and Jeremy Rubin (Founder of Judica and a Bitcoin core researcher & developer)? The three joined StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson and CPO Avihu Levy to discuss the vision to scale Bitcoin with Starknet and how it will impact the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities. Below are highlights from the X Space, led by StarkWare’s Head of Ecosystem, Abdelhamid Bakhta.
How will Starknet settling on Bitcoin affect the Bitcoin & Ethereum communities?
Vitalik, Dan Held, and Jeremy Rubin on how Starknet settling on Bitcoin would affect both the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities, and the prospect of enabling the trustless flow of the assets between them. Hint: It could mean greater decentralization of the exchange layer of blockchain, says Vitalik.
Native DeFi on Bitcoin?
L1 is simple and it works—and we want to keep it that way, says Dan Held. Starknet and other L2s, on the other hand, could introduce a world of new DeFi opportunities to Bitcoin: Borrowing, lending, staking, and yield farming, without compromising on security.
Greater decentralization of mining pools
Native DeFi is only the tip of the iceberg of what Starknet—a scalable Layer 2 that enables general-purpose computing—could bring to Bitcoin. Mining pools in the Bitcoin ecosystem, for example, are currently a point of centralization, says Jeremy Rubin. Could Starkent, as an execution layer that unifies Bitcoin and Ethereum, bring greater decentralization to mining pools?
‘Making crypto payments great again’
And let’s not forget about the fundamentals—we are scaling Bitcoin, after all. In addition to the new applications Starknet could bring to Bitcoin, its scaling power will also improve existing Bitcoin payments. Vitalik covers the prospect of scaling Bitcoin payments with a proper Layer 2 that satisfies the needed security properties. Hint: ZK all the way.
How OP_CAT opens the door to Starknet on Bitcoin
Starknet over Bitcoin would be awesome, but how can that technically happen? StarkWare CPO Avihu Levy dives into how the proposed OP_CAT upgrade to Bitcoin makes it possible.
Why Bitcoin?
“In math we trust.” StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson discusses StarkWare’s roots in Bitcoin, and how it led him on his path from theoretical computer science to becoming a true believer in blockchain’s transformative potential.
The full X Space
For those of you interested in hearing more of Vitalik, Dan, and Jeremy’s thoughts about the plan to settle over Bitcoin and Ethereum, you can find the entire X Space below:
