StarkWare moves to open-source its prover

Moving one step closer further along the decentralization spectrum, StarkWare opens up what they call the “magic wand” of Starknet

article-image

ESB Professional/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Six months ago, StarkWare promised to open-source their STARK prover. 

Now the team is making good on the pledge. The prover is a core piece of technology underpinning the Starknet zk-rollup, which StarkWare released on mainnet in 2021, and gave a major upgrade in July.

Ethereum’s scaling roadmap relies on moving transaction execution off of mainnet onto rollups, which bundle bunches together. Zk-rollups submit proofs of transaction batches, thus saving scarce blockspace on the Ethereum network.

The prover is “a vital component within our tech stack,” StarkWare president and co-founder Eli Ben Sasson told Blockworks. “We view it as the magic wand of STARK technology, [that] plays a key role in helping to scale Ethereum.”

The company said the move “is a major step forward in decentralizing Starknet” in a blog post published Tuesday.

Polygon was the first to open-source their prover, albeit using the AGPL v3 open-source license. Matter Labs has pledged to follow-suit with its zkSync version.

Read more: Polygon and Matter Labs compete on zkEVM rollups

A spokesperson for Polygon declined to comment on StarkWare’s latest initiative. Matter Labs couldn’t be reached by time of publication.

Starkware has previously been criticized for having a closed-source prover, although open-sourcing this component was always a goal. In February 2023, StarkWare’s commitment became more concrete, as the company stated it would use a more permissive Apache 2.0 license. 

“Open-sourcing the Starknet Prover will allow more eyes to review the code, improve its quality, help detect bugs, and provide transparency,” StarkWare wrote at the time.

By following through on that aim, StarkWare lays claim to having “the most decentralized rollup stack,” including key infrastructure components, such as its programming language, Cairo, and multiple implementations of full nodes.

Starknet’s new sequencer “will also be open-sourced” according to the blog post, although a StarkWare spokesperson did not have a timeframe for that next step as yet.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Ethena Labs is leaping from its flagship synthetic dollar, USDe, to a full product suite—USDtb, iUSDe, and the Arbitrum-based Converge Chain—designed to marry crypto-native yields with TradFi-grade compliance. Our analysis shows how expanding into CME, ETF options, and tokenized Treasuries could lift protocol revenue from sub-$500 million in a bear case to several billion dollars if favorable regulation and institutional adoption align.

article-image

The L1’s Interwoven Stack is the most opinionated tech stack yet

article-image

Bitcoin is still rising, 11 years after the documentary film The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin

article-image

Arch Labs CEO told Blockworks that the team plans to launch a native token, but declined to give details

article-image

CEO Mike Silagadze tells Blockworks that the US is “open for business” and why its DeFi bank offering is the first of many

article-image

Doing one thing well and leaving everything else out is often what disruptive technologies do best