Starkware, ZK, and Bitcoin With Eli Ben-Sasson

Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of Starkware, joins The Gwart Show to discuss Ethereum L2s and Bitcoin scaling solutions. We go through rollup controversies, Starkware’s airdrop drama, and how we might actually scale protocols through ZK proofs and STARKs. Lastly, we touch on OP_CAT, which the Starkware team has been pushing behind the scenes.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @EliBenSasson

00:00 Start

00:44 Guest introduction

01:25 What is Starkware working on?

03:15 Working on BTC vs ETH

06:27 Why did Bitcoin dev stagnate?

08:44 Chain agnostic

11:52 Why will Validity Rollups win?

14:59 What Starkware is doing differently

18:17 Hardware

20:38 ETH's Rollup roadmap

22:13 Optimistic rollups

25:37 ETH Starknet adoption

31:27 Airdrop fumble

39:48 Would you do the airdrop differently?

42:33 Stark token for gas

45:13 Selling Bitcoiners on Stark token?

47:26 Based Rollups won't work

50:01 Base capturing marketshare

54:51 Is OP_CAT required?

57:00 What if no OP_CAT?

58:57 Why should Bitcoiners care?

👋The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs is building Atlas, the blockchain purpose-built for verifiable finance. You may know of Ellipsis Labs by their first product Phoenix, a fully on-chain orderbook DEX that’s done over 50 billion dollars in unincentivized volume. If you’re interested in working for a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas. You can learn more and apply on Ellipsis Labs’ Twitter “at Ellipsis_Labs”. Don’t forget to check out Atlas too, @atlasxyz on Twitter.

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