Starknet unveils major performance enhancement goals for 2023

In 2023, Starknet has prioritized performance enhancements with the aim of boosting throughput, reducing latency, and lowering transaction costs.

Last week, StarkWare, released its roadmap for 2023 and provided some details about the considerations behind the decision.

In the StarkWare release, the team states its goal in the coming months is to enhance network performance to accommodate the anticipated surge in users and developers.

A focus on network performance

Performance is characterized by throughput, latency, and transaction cost, and the team has outlined the priority areas it plans to address.

With regards to throughput and latency, the upcoming Starknet v0.12.0 will introduce noteworthy improvements resulting from the last six months of work towards Rust-ifying the Starknet stack.

The version will include the integration of a Rust-based sequencer developed by StarkWare and a new Rust-Cairo VM, cairo-rs, developed by LambdaClass. Both are open-source projects, and the team expects to provide performance benchmarks soon.

This transition will significantly reduce block execution time, leading to an increase in throughput. In the absence of congestion, and the dev team anticipates a reduction in transaction latency, as block execution time is the primary contributor to latency.

Moreover, in the upcoming v0.15.0 release, Starknet shares intentions for shorter block intervals, as the network plans to decouple the relationship between a block and its proof, allowing for proofs to attest to the integrity of multiple blocks, ultimately leading to improved user experience.

10 times Ethereum’s throughput

During a recent interview, Ben-Sasson, the co-founder and president of StarkWare, reiterates these goals sharing that Starknet’s ultimate objective is to achieve at least ten times Ethereum’s throughput at a tenth of the cost.

He cited StarkEx’s capacity to facilitate high TPS on the decentralized exchange dYdX, which at times, processes up to 54 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum’s average of 10-12 TPS.

Ben-Sasson highlighted that dYdX transactions are approximately four to five times greater than those on Ethereum, indicating promising scaling potential for Starknet in the near future.

As the Ethereum blockchain continues to experience congestion and high gas fees, Starknet’s performance upgrades could make it an attractive alternative for developers and users seeking a faster, more cost-effective solution for their decentralized applications.

This could, in turn, drive greater adoption of both Ethereum and layer 2 scaling solutions across the broader blockchain industry.