Blockchain Expansion Company Starkware Raises $ 75 Million

Israeli startup Starkware, which is developing solutions to expand blockchain capacity, today announced the completion of a $ 75 million funding round led by Paradigm and with the participation of Sequoia and Funders Fund, DCVC, Pantera, Wing and new investors Three Arrows and Alameda Research. This brings the amount raised by the company to $ 111 million, in addition to the $ 12 million it received from the Ethereum Foundation. Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Etherium, has previously invested in the company. Starkware was founded in the beginning of 2018 by President Ellie Ben Sasson, CEO Uri Kolodny, Chief Architect Michael Riapzev and Chief Scientist Alessandro Keiza. Ben-Sasson and Riapzev came from the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, Sheesa from the University of California, Berkeley, and Claudny is a tech entrepreneur. Starkware was founded on the basis of research into Zero Knowledge Evidence (ZKP) conducted by Ben Sasson and Ryabshev in the Technion. ZKP can provide solutions to blockchain network overload and privacy problems. Starkware’s StarkE app can increase the capacity of the blockchain network 1,000 times or even more using mathematical methods. The app acts as a platform for trading and issuing digital assets such as NFTs. Starkware is currently developing StarkNet, which is an open network that will allow increased capacity for all blockchain developers. The company’s beta version will be available to developers later this year. The company’s system is built around the Cairo language, which was created by the company’s researchers and engineers. According to Ben Sasson, the company’s technology will make releasing NFTs much cheaper. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unit of data on a digital ledger called a blockchain, where each NFT can represent a unique digital component, and thus cannot be substituted. NFTs can represent digital files such as art, sound, video clips, items in video games, and other forms of creative work. Ben Sasson said, “Instead of issuing every NFT costing $ 40, we can cut that down to a third of a cent because we made the process more efficient and faster.” The Technion was at odds with Ben Sasson, a professor at the university, and his student Ryabzev to work “in the dark” by setting up a company based on the research they had conducted in the Technion for many years. Last year the two sides reached a settlement, and Ben-Sasson left the Technion. Kolodny said the recent funding round will enable the company to hire talented developers and product personnel. Posted by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on March 25, 2021 © Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2021