Ethereum layer 2 Starknet is laying the groundwork to choose Bitcoin and Ethereum to unify the 2 largest blockchains on a single layer.
The Starknet Basis stated in its March 11 Bitcoin roadmap that it’s aiming for Starknet to turn out to be Bitcoin’s execution layer, scaling it from 13 transactions per second to hundreds, decreasing blocks and fuel charges, and creating a greater consumer expertise.
“Most Bitcoin immediately sits static in wallets and exchanges, constrained by the constraints of the community’s authentic design: a scarcity of scalability and an incapacity to natively assist purposes past easy shopping for, promoting, and transferring,” the muse stated.
It added that whereas some traders view Bitcoin as “digital gold,” it believes “there’s a demand for using Bitcoin for functions past that.”
Supply: Starknet
Beforehand, StarkWare CEO Eli Ben Sasson, the corporate behind the STARK proof that contributes to the event of Starknet, stated OP_CAT, a Satoshi-era opcode for unlocking programmability on Bitcoin that was disabled over safety considerations, would enable Starknet to choose the Bitcoin blockchain.
If profitable, Starknet stated the transfer would enable builders to construct purposes on the Bitcoin community by way of sensible contracts and allow purposes corresponding to staking, borrowing, lending, leveraged buying and selling, and yield farming.
As a part of the announcement, StarkWare stated it has joined the rising variety of companies in making a Bitcoin (BTC) reserve, holding a rising portion of its treasury in crypto.
Supply: Ameen Soleimani
Starknet can even group up with Bitcoin Web3 pockets Xverse, whose founder and CEO Ken Liao stated the mixing, slated for the second quarter of 2025, will obtain Bitcoin’s “DeFi take-off second.”
Xverse stated wallets should be extra than simply storage options; and permit quick access to Bitcoin’s rising utility. Liao stated in a press release that the endgame is trustless DeFi on Bitcoin.
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“In immediately’s setting, there’s a temptation for pockets groups to say, ‘yeah, let’s simply concentrate on making it simpler for folks to make use of Bitcoin as a retailer of worth,’” Liao stated.
“However the long-term way forward for Bitcoin additionally contains utility, and that’s why layer 2 options should attain the general public by way of the wallets they really use,” he added.
In the meantime, in a March 11 X house discussing Starknet’s plan, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated a correct Bitcoin L2 that may fulfill the wanted safety properties would “make crypto funds nice once more, and all these use instances can work.”
Starknet on Bitcoin and Ethereum https://t.co/tCyQDHY7Yr
— StarkWare 🐺🐱 (@StarkWareLtd) March 11, 2025
Buterin stated there’s a “lot of worth” in enabling the trustless move of belongings between the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems, corresponding to simpler paths for decentralized alternate.
“If you happen to return to the white paper, Bitcoin was meant to be a peer-to-peer digital money system, and clearly, layer 1 shouldn’t be practically scalable sufficient for that,” Buterin stated.
“I believe we’ve additionally seen a few of the limits of the Lightning Community and that type of strategy.“
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