SNARKs n’ STARKs
summary
Argues STARKs trade shorter trust and quantum safety for larger proof sizes and deliver far greater amortized scale in practice: current STARK proofs land around 50–100 KB proofs but using recursion and batching they attest to massive workloads—claiming 10 million mints via recursion in production—so cost per item falls to bytes. Describes the Cairo language and Starknet stack as the implemented toolchain (Cairo language), notes account abstraction is native, sequencing remains centralized today but migration to Tendermint-style decentralization is planned.
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chapters (23)
- 0:00Intro and welcoming Eli Ben-Sasson
- 0:43From academia to Zcash and StarkWare
- 2:46Origins of STARKs and focus on scalability
- 3:59SNARKs vs STARKs: key differences
- 5:22Improving STARK efficiency and recursion
- 7:13Amortized proof cost and real-world usage
- 8:27STARKs enabling blockchain scalability
- 9:42Privacy and fractal scaling with Layer 3s
- 10:16Starknet, Cairo, and developer onboarding
- 11:33Applications on Starknet and account abstraction
- 12:41Why Cairo instead of EVM compatibility
- 13:48Fine print of EVM-compatible ZK systems
- 15:02Why Cairo will dominate future smart contracts
- 16:20Starknet developer growth and ecosystem
- 17:38STARK-based systems becoming the norm
- 18:58Ethereum as base layer, not competition
- 19:34What Starknet still needs to improve
- 20:50Community building and global expansion
- 21:25Lessons learned in company building
- 22:58Flat teams and decentralized leadership
- 24:16Timeline predictions and confidence
- 24:48What scalable blockchain infrastructure looks like
- 25:29Closing thoughts and thank you
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