Privacy is one of the hardest unsolved problems in crypto and, currently, one with surging demand. We at StarkWare believe that Starknet stands out as one of the only ecosystems that meets all the fundamental requirements for a true privacy engine. Here is why Starknet is uniquely positioned to deliver it.

1. A Fast Chain

A privacy network must handle two things simultaneously:

  • High throughput: to support heavy private computation and high transaction volumes
  • Low latency: because privacy UX breaks instantly if the experience feels slow

Starknet delivers on both. Starknet can comfortably process ~1,000 true TPS with solid L2 finality, and we are aiming for 10k+ TPS and even faster finality in the coming months.

The requirement for speed disqualifies chains that are inherently slow at the base layer, such as Zcash. While Zcash is working hard on improving its performance, it could also benefit massively from building a ZK rollup on top. To that end, there have been extensive discussions about creating a Starknet-style L2 on top of Zcash to provide Zcash with account abstraction, high throughput with low transaction fees, and other features, all while maintaining Zcash’s L1 privacy.

2. Succinct Verifiability

A privacy-first blockchain must be cheaply and easily verifiable. This is because privacy at scale demands client-side proving. In other words,

  • Users’ phones must be able to verify the chain state succinctly
  • Proof generation/verification must be cheap
  • Users can’t rely solely on consensus for trust

Starknet, built on STARKs from day one, inherits succinctness by default, making client-side proofs accessible.

If your blockchain is not succinctly verifiable, mobile wallets cannot privately prove anything without outsourcing trust. This requirement effectively disqualifies fast, but non-succinct chains like Solana for full privacy; however, these networks can still build strong app-layer privacy tools.

3. ZK Friendliness at Its Core

Privacy chains must be ZK-friendly at every level because it is essential that everything be easily and cheaply provable, including hash functions, VMs, languages, proving systems, and beyond.

In this regard, Starknet is unique because:

  • Its entire architecture from inception was designed to provide efficient proving
  • The Cairo VM is optimized for recursion, STARK generation, and verifiability
  • Every component is future-proofed for ZK scalability
  • There is no dependency on the EVM roadmap (no expectation of maintaining compatibility)

Starknet’s advantage: it is ZK-native at every level. This places Starknet far ahead of EVM-based rollups, which are forced to retrofit ZK into a VM that was never designed for it.

Solana deserves credit for enshrining some ZK-verification primitives, which enable some privacy features at the app layer. However, without succinct verifiability at the chain level, it falls short for full-spectrum privacy.

4. Cheap, Abundant Computation

Private computation requires a lot of proving and verifying, something most chains simply can’t support. However, because Starknet is ZK-native, computation is both abundant and cheap:

  • Verifying proofs on Starknet is extremely cost-efficient
  • Noir proofs, Cairo proofs, and recursive proofs are all trivial to verify
  • With future-enshrined primitives, this becomes even cheaper

Starknet can become the most efficient global settlement layer for ZK verification, all while maintaining maximum security and succinctness. That’s why we’ve often described Starknet as the backbone of the “Integrity Web.” Now, it has become apparent that this same property makes it an incredible privacy engine, as well.

5. Best UX

Privacy fails if UX fails, but achieving privacy with UX that is seamless and intuitive enough for your average user is very difficult because existing blockchain infra is not compatible with privacy. One reason for this is that the UX tends to be quite fragmented, with users juggling multiple tools, bridges, and proofs manually.

However, Starknet has two major advantages when it comes to UX:

A. Native Account Abstraction

Native account abstraction offers web2-level onboarding, frictionless signatures, session keys, smart accounts that abstract away complexity.

B. Fast Client-Side Proving + Efficient Light Clients

S-two, StarkWare’s next-gen prover, is blazingly fast and becoming ZK-friendly for mobile proving, thereby providing bringing client-side proving. It outperforms other leading ZK VMs by up to 28x. This, combined with succinct light clients, results in fast, private transactions; a user experience that can compete with mainstream apps; and the hardest part: instant notes discovery (hint, the Starknet team is working on something big here!).

Starknet Meets All the Requirements for Endgame Privacy

To summarize, very few protocols satisfy even half of the requirements for true privacy, but Starknet meets them all simultaneously:

 

Starknet has the potential to become the ultimate privacy engine because its architecture, performance, and ZK-native design solve all the fundamental challenges of scalable, trustless, usable privacy.

Stay Tuned

Just last week, Starknet dropped major privacy news with the introduction of strkBTC, a new wrapped Bitcoin token with built-in privacy capabilities. With strkBTC, users choose whether or not to shield their balances and transfers, and can participate in all DeFi on Starknet without publicly broadcasting positions, strategies, or finances.

Learn more about strkBTC here and here.

You can learn more about the basics of blockchains and privacy here. To learn about how S-two, StarkWare’s next-generation prover, is ideal for onchain privacy, read this.

Also, be sure to follow the Starknet X handle and website for the latest privacy announcements and developments!