Starknet monthly recap #13: July

All you need to know about Starknet in July

Author

Starknet OG
July 31, 2024

Starknet monthly recap #13: July

Welcome to the 13th edition of my monthly recap, where I bring you the most important updates and developments from the Starknet ecosystem.

A lot happened this month, so hang on! 😎

📣 Important news of the month

🔹 STRK Staking Coming on Starknet

Starknet has announced the arrival of STRK staking for Q4 2024, specifically in October on Mainnet!

With this development, Starknet will be the first L2 to integrate such a mechanism, adding a new utility to the STRK token, which is currently used for:

✅ Governance

✅ Paying gas fees

✅ DeFi activities

⌛️Starting in October, staking

All STRK holders will be able to participate in this first phase of staking, except for the Starknet Foundation, StarkWare, and locked tokens. Additionally, we can except some LST products built by the community as soon as staking is officially launched, allowing us to participate in staking while still being able to use staked STRK in DeFi activities 💃 

For more information about staking, check out the dedicated forum post.

🔹 Parallel Execution and Block Packing Just One Month Away

Starknet v0.13.2 is coming very soon: on Testnet in August 5th and on Mainnet in August 26th. This upgrade will introduce numerous UX and DevX improvements. The most significant enhancement is the increase in Starknet's TPS capacity to around 250, while transaction finality will decrease to around 2 seconds.

In short: ultra-fast transactions and the ability to handle a massive number of transactions simultaneously ⚡️ 

If you want to learn more about how this works:

🔹 The Faster Prover in Town

StarkWare is currently working on its next-gen prover, which is 1000x more efficient than the current Starknet prover, Stone, and over 100x better than any other prover known in the market.

Stwo will be in production in early 2025, making all Starknet-powered chains much faster to prove and more cost-effective!

🔹 Stark over Bitcoin

The big news from last month was StarkWare’s announcement of their intention to scale Bitcoin with STARK technology, aiming to make Starknet the first Layer 2 to settle and scale both Ethereum and Bitcoin simultaneously. And this wasn’t just a marketing announcement; StarkWare has already made significant progress in this quest 🧑‍🍳

First, StarkWare successfully launched the Stwo Prover on Bitcoin Signet (testnet) and verified the first ZK proof in Bitcoin’s history 🤯

Yes, in just a few months of work, StarkWare (and its partners) have already reached this major milestone. Promising for the future ✨

If you want to know more about how they achieved this, check it out here!

Despite this advancement, it is crucial for StarkWare and all ZK on Bitcoin enthusiasts that OP_CAT (BIP) passes. This is why StarkWare recently launched a $1M research fund to explore the benefits and drawbacks of activating OP_CAT on Bitcoin.

Additionally, here is StarkWare’s first research paper on combining STARK and OP_CAT on Bitcoin.

Overall, if you want to learn more about STARK over Bitcoin, here’s an AMA held by StarkWare and the Foundation on this topic.

🔹 IBC Protocol and Tendermint Consensus Algorithm on Starknet

Informal Systems, StarkWare, and the Starknet Foundation are collaborating to explore and integrate the Tendermint consensus algorithm and IBC protocol on Starknet.

The goal? To enhance the interoperability of Starknet!

🔹 DeFi Spring 2.0

Following the success of the first phase of DeFi Spring, the Starknet Foundation has announced the continuation of this program, featuring:

  • An additional 50M STRK (making a total of 90M STRK still up for grabs)

  • An extended end date, now December 31, 2024.

To recap, this campaign provides a significant APR boost for liquidity providers. You can learn more about this campaign, including the protocols involved, the yields, and NFTs to mint for participants, on the dedicated website.

Also, if you want to bridge funds to Starknet to take advantage of this campaign, you can use LayerSwap, which reimburses 85% of bridge fees in STRK tokens!

📢 Starknet Ecosystem Update

The latest significant UX improvement is here, allowing you to interact with Starknet dApps without leaving X! Yes, yes, yes, you can now swap on AVNU, trade NFTs on Flex, play STARKarcade and more directly from X, thanks to Slinks ⚡

🔹 Two OG Oracles on Starknet

The two biggest oracles in the crypto ecosystem are live on Starknet Mainnet! Developers can now leverage Chainlink’s and Pyth’s price feeds to build their Starknet dApps 🕺 

🔹 Metamask ft AVNU

Imagine interacting with your favorite EVM networks and Starknet without switching wallets! 🤯

This world is becoming a reality: MetaMask (through Snap) users can now swap on AVNU! In the coming weeks and months, we can expect more Starknet dApps to integrate MetaMask for their users.

🔹 New Braavos Wallet

Following the previous news, while MetaMask is excellent for onboarding new users to Starknet, native Starknet wallets (Argent and Braavos) surpass MetaMask in every aspect: UX, security, and available features.

On that note, here’s the new version of the Braavos wallet, featuring an updated UI and a DeFi dashboard 💅

🔹 EVM and CairoVM on the Same Layer?

Kakarot’s bold vision is to make Starknet the first-ever DualVM ZK rollup, supporting both EVM and Cairo VM. This means that you will soon see EVM dApps on the Starknet ecosystem 🕺

And this is happening this year: Kakarot will launch on Starknet mainnet in Q4 2024. Learn how in this Q&A with Kakarot's CTO.

🔹 Pay Your Gas Fees with the Token of Your Choice!

AVNU, the pioneer of Paymaster on Starknet, has made two significant advances in democratizing the use of Paymaster.

First, they’ve listed new tokens! Users can now pay gas fees on AVNU with: ETH, STRK, wBTC, rETH, wstETH, USDC, USDT, DAI, Ekubo, NSTR, ZEND, SWAY, and LORDS.

Additionally, Nostra has integrated AVNU's Paymaster infrastructure, allowing its users to also benefit from this major UX improvement! Nostra users can pay gas fees with: ETH, STRK, NSTR, DAI, USDC, USDT, and wBTC.

🔹 Nimbora Shipping Non-stop

Throughout July, Nimbora has launched a new strategy each week. Here are the latest three:

✅ Angle

They've also introduced a highly useful feature that eliminates the 1-3 day wait time for withdrawing assets from strategies/vaults: instant withdrawal!

With these continuous innovations, it's no wonder Nimbora is currently the fastest-growing dApp on Starknet. If you want to learn more about Nimbora, here is a deep dive content about it.

🔹 Argent Card

Argent wallet is currently developing a new exclusive and very useful product: a crypto card!

This means you will soon be able to use your Starknet assets directly for ‘real-life’ needs! 🤯

Powered by session keys and Starknet's low gas fees, the Argent Card will be the first fully self-custodial card available on a Validity Rollup.

The good news is there won't be any spread or outrageous fees like most current crypto cards 👇

🔹 Two Significant Advances in the Tokenomics of Two Starknet Projects

The first is the launch of ZEND staking. You can now secure the zkLend protocol, earn rewards, and be part of its decentralized future.

The second is the end of the DCA sale of 33.3% of Ekubo’s supply, with an average sale price of $1.02. Now 100% of the supply is liquid on the market, with the majority being staked on Ekubo to participate in governance.

🔹 Alpha Zone 💅

Seven projects have launched on Mainnet:

  • Vesu, a new innovative permissionless, open-source, and audited Money Market. If you want to learn more about this new protocol, here is a great deep dive thread.

  • Raize Club, a UX-centric Prediction Market

  • Coin98, a wallet integrating the Starknet network

  • STRKfarm, a yield aggregator, with its new strategy USDC sensei

  • PulsarMoney, the social payment hub, allowing you to send and receive Starknet assets directly from X

  • A new game from Starkarcade, Starksweep

  • Dragark, a NFT-based game

On the Testnet side:

🧑‍🌾 What did I do on Starknet in July?

In terms of farming, it is quite simple:

  • My STRK is farming on Carmine, currently offering between 30% and 40% APR.

  • 80% of my ETH is farming on Nimbora, in the Pendle/Puffer and Pendle/EtherFi pools offering around 18-20% APR.

  • The rest of my ETH is on Vesu, working at around 11% APR.

In terms of speculation, during July, I finished accumulating Ekubo. Now, I’m enjoying the ride and have no plans to sell anything in the short term (or at least not before it reaches my minimum target).

Why Ekubo?

  • The DCA sale has concluded: 33.3% of the supply has been sold to the community.

  • Another 33.3% of the supply is held by the team, with no plans to sell anything in the next 2 years.

  • 100% of the supply is liquid, with a low market cap.

  • The majority of this supply is currently staked.

  • Ekubo is the most efficient AMM out there, on Starknet and probably in the entire crypto ecosystem.

  • Eventually, Ekubo will likely implement a fee-sharing system, either by directly distributing to holders or through a buyback of Ekubo.

NFA DYOR fam, I’m just a monkey with the StarkWare badge

To further support the degen culture of the Starknet community, I also aped and currently hold the new trending memecoin on Starknet (chads know which ones 😏). Note that all memecoins on Starknet have nuked in the past, so be very careful fam, I’m just supporting the vibe 🦧 

📰 Some of the Best Content of the Month

This section aims to bring you the best content of the month to help you better understand Starknet and position yourself optimally within this ecosystem 🧑‍🍳

🔹 New Ecosystem Map

Want to do your own research and stay updated on everything happening on Starknet? Well, here's the updated ecosystem map, featuring all the user-centric projects building on Starknet 😼

🔹 ETHcc Recap

Didn't make it to EthCC this year? Neither did I 😢

But I have some good news for you:

  • Here are all the talks from the StarkWare team at EthCC 💪

  • Check out this vlog presenting the event by Miss Marijke 💅 

Watching them feels like being there.

🔹 Account Abstraction Delivery on Starknet

Starknet is known for building an ecosystem with UX that closely mirrors web2. Over time, we are getting closer and closer to this reality! For example, here are Starknet's plans to completely abstract fees for users.

🔹 Starknet Roadmap

Speaking of Starknet’s plans, here’s an excellent thread explaining the Starknet roadmap.

None of the content of this newsletter is financial advice. Always do your own research.

Thank you for reading, and see you in July for the next monthly recap. ⏳

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