Today’s launch of Starknet staking mainnet crowns a long process of developing, testing, and deploying the solution and marks a significant step on the journey toward a fully decentralized PoS ecosystem. Everstake is proud to support staking in this network by running a validator, allowing the community and institutions to delegate and thus participate in the development of the network.
This article is an overview of Starknet and its mechanics, aiming to help our delegators make an informed decision on staking the project’s native token, STRK.
Who Developed Starknet
Starknet was developed by StarkWare, a software company focusing on cryptographic solutions that boost scalability, security, and privacy. It was founded in 2018 and develops technologies based on STARK (Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge), which is a kind of zk-proof enabling fast and secure processing of transactions.
Starknet is one of the company’s main products first launched in 2021. It is a permissionless decentralized L2 network on Ethereum that uses zk-rollups to increase throughput while reducing transaction costs and ensuring that Ethereum’s security standards are thoroughly maintained.
How Starknet Works
As was mentioned above, Starknet relies on zk-rollup technology, which bundles multiple transactions off-chain into a single proof that is then submitted to the Ethereum mainnet. Particularly, Starknet generates STARK proofs that attest to the validity of the bundled transactions, and the verification occurs on the Ethereum mainnet to ensure that the off-chain computations are correct but without revealing the data that underpin them, which dramatically enhances privacy and security.
Starknet also ensures data availability by posting required data on-chain so anyone can reconstruct the system’s state at a given moment if necessary. This ensures high-grade transparency and trustlessness of the ecosystem.
In practical terms, this mechanism allows Starknet to scale Ethereum applications with greater efficiency and at lower fees. Moreover, Starknet provides developers with tools and infrastructure for building dApps. Particularly, they can write smart contracts in Cairo, Starknet’s native programming language specifically designed for efficient STARK proof generation. The language is based on Rust and abstracts the complexities of zk-proofs so that developers can focus on the application logic.
Staking in Starknet
The launch of staking is one of the most crucial milestones in Starknet’s evolution into a fully decentralized PoS blockchain that started back in 2021.
Staking in Starknet implies locking the native token STRK into the network’s staking protocol, which ensures its security and high performance. This can be done either directly or by delegating the tokens to validators, such as Everstake. Staking benefits are proportional to the original stake. The minimum staking threshold for validators is set at 20,000 STRK, but in the case of delegation, users may stake as much as they see fit.
Validators run full nodes and can decide for themselves whether to allow delegation. Those who do share the rewards they earn with the delegators proportionally to their contribution.
Starknet’s protocol has a minting curve designed to balance participation and inflation, with the first batch of tokens available for staking comprising 1.3m STRK. The rewards are adjusted depending on the amount of tokens locked. The maximum theoretical inflation rate in Starknet is 1.6% in the first stage and may be changed in the future. Starknet Foundation, Starkware, and respective locked tokens will not participate in staking during the current phase.
Unstaking is subject to network-mandated security latencies. When a user or a validator announces their intent to unstake to the network, they will have to wait 21 days until their tokens become fully available.
Everstake’s Role in Starknet
Everstake is proud to play a pivotal role as a validator on StarknNet’s staking mainnet. As a validator, Everstake maintains and secures the network by running a full node and participates in testing the protocol’s economic incentive structure. In later phases, we will also be involved in producing blocks and attesting to their validity.
Delegation to Everstake is available through popular staking apps like Staking Rewards, Voyager, and Karnot, giving STRK holders various participation options. Everstake’s validator address and staking guide will be shared soon to ensure a seamless staking experience.
Meanwhile, you can learn more about the mechanics of staking in Starknet from the project’s official documentation.
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