StarkWare Reaches $8B Valuation Following Latest $100M Funding Round

StarkWare Industries, which provides solutions to marque blockchain exertion much scalable, has raised $100 cardinal successful a Series D backing circular astatine an $8 cardinal valuation, up from the $2 cardinal valuation astatine its past fundraise successful November.

The circular was led by concern firms Greenoaks Capital and Coatue with Tiger Global among the different participants, according to a property merchandise provided to CoinDesk. The capital, which besides included an undisclosed magnitude of worker banal sold successful a secondary transaction, volition beryllium utilized for merchandise and concern development, engineering and increasing the surrounding ecosystem, StarkWare CEO Uri Kolodnytold told CoinDesk successful an interview.

Significantly, helium nine-figure woody closed during a crypto carnivore market. According to Kolodny, StarkWare and its backers are little focused connected the existent prices of tech stocks oregon cryptocurrencies and much focused connected “building for the agelong haul.”

StarkWare exertion addresses the scalability issues of the Ethereum blockchain, which origin dilatory throughput and rise gas, oregon transaction, fees. The institution has 2 platforms. The StarkEx scaling engine, which the institution said handles much transactions per period than the Bitcoin network, powers the likes of non-fungible token (NFT) level Immutable X and decentralized speech dYdX. The 2nd platform, StarkNet, launched successful February and puts blockchain scaling technologies successful the hands of developers gathering decentralized applications.

“High transaction fees and constricted bandwidth connected blockchains are inhibiting the wide adoption of crypto today,” said Coatue wide spouse Luca Schmid successful the property release. “StarkWare is solving this with Validity Rollups that we judge volition let blockchain apps to service millions of customers seamlessly.”

Rollup technologies bundle hundreds of transactions disconnected the main Ethereum blockchain to trim the computational stress. Optimistic rollups usage a web of validators to cheque that the information successful the bundle is legitimate, which means the transactions tin beryllium challenged and temporarily delayed from hitting Ethereum. Zero cognition (zk) rollups, besides called validity rollups, usage cryptography to mathematically validate the transaction bundle earlier it hits Ethereum.

StarkNet, zkSync and Aztec connection zk rollup solutions. StarkWare’s offering uses a cryptographic method called STARKs, which was developed by institution co-founder and president Eli Ben-Sasson alongside different machine scientists.

“What our exertion delivers – and it does truthful done mathematics – is integrity astatine scale. And C.S. Lewis beautifully defined integrity arsenic ‘doing the close happening adjacent erstwhile nary 1 is watching,” Ben-Sasson told ConDesk. “What our exertion does is it uses mathematics successful bid to asseverate to the blockchain that a immense magnitude of transactions was computed off-chain with integrity.”

Near-term plans for StarkWare see decentralizing StarkNet. Kolodny declined to remark connected whether the process would impact a token.

“We anticipation to beryllium very, precise precocious connected our mode to afloat decentralization, if not already there, wrong the coming year,” helium said.

StarkWare’s newest fundraise is the latest awesome that task capitalists are betting large connected rollup technologies. Last fall, concern elephantine Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led a $50 cardinal backing round for zkSync creator Matter Labs. And successful March, a16z participated successful the $150 million fundraiser for optimistic rollup supplier Optimism astatine a $1.65 cardinal valuation.

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