A notable development has occurred in the Starknet protocol, one of the most talked-about projects recently. Accordingly, Uri Kolodny, the executive chairman and co-founder of Ethereum Layer-2 developer StarkWare Industries, announced his resignation from the CEO position due to a health issue that requires his full attention, through a statement on social media platform X.
Key Developments at StarkWare
Uri Kolodny, the executive chairman and co-founder of StarkWare Industries, shared in a post on X that he had taken a year off but it was not enough. Despite stepping down due to health issues, Kolodny will remain on the boards of both StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation. Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and president of StarkWare, will take over as CEO of StarkWare. Kolodny expressed his confidence in Ben-Sasson with the following words:
“I am confident that he will carry StarkWare forward with talent and dedication.”
Ben-Sasson is also known as one of the developers of STARK (Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge), the cryptographic proof type used by StarkWare’s network for execution on the Ethereum blockchain network.
Known as an Ethereum Layer-2 protocol, Starknet processes transactions on the network and then provides STARK proofs to Ethereum for verification, reducing the load on Ethereum. This step results in faster and cheaper transactions on the Layer-2 network.
Noteworthy Details About StarkWare
StarkWare was founded in 2018 and is backed by prominent investors such as Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and Coatue. The company raised $100 million in a Series D funding round in May 2022, reaching a valuation of $8 billion. To date, StarkWare has raised a total of $261 million in funding.
StarkWare offers two main products: StarkEx, a permissioned network tailored to the specific needs of decentralized applications, and Starknet, a Layer-2 network that allows every user to create decentralized applications or dapps.
Starknet will have its native token, STRK, expected to be unlocked in April of this year. The total supply of STRK is ten billion, and according to STRK tokenomics, it will be used for transaction fees, governance, and staking within the Starknet network.
