Starknet monthly recap #6: December

Welcome to the 6th edition of my monthly recap, where I bring you the most important updates and developments from the Starknet ecosystem!

📣 Important news of the month

🔹 Upcoming Distribution of 18% of the STRK Supply to the Community

The Starknet Foundation has announced that it will distribute 1.8 billion STRK tokens to the community through various community campaigns 👇

🔹 Significant Network Update

Starknet has released version 0.13 of its network on the testnet. This update brings several UX improvements, including significantly reduced gas fees. Additionally, in the future, users will be able to pay gas fees in STRK token once the token is transferable 👇

Furthermore, a vote will take place starting from January 04 to decide whether this update will be pushed to the Mainnet or not 👇

🔹 StarkWare’s Plan to Distribute Over $3.5M+ in ETH

In its mission to reward and support developers who stepped out of their comfort zone to learn and develop with Cairo on Starknet, StarkWare and the Foundation have announced the upcoming distribution of a portion of the fees collected by the sequencer to ecosystem developers 👇️ 

🔹 Exciting Partnerships in the Starknet appchains/L3 sector

Two significant developments have emerged in this sector:

• Avail, Polygon's Data Availability solution, has collaborated with StarkWare to offer its DA solution to Appchain developers 👇️ 

• Moonsong Labs is working with StarkWare to integrate the Stone prover with the Madara sequencer 👇️ 

🔹 A New Gateway for Developing Innovative Applications

Pragma's Verifiable Random Function (VRF) is now available in Cairo 1.0, paving the way for numerous random-based games, including casinos and the lottery application Bountive.

🔹 StarkWare's Yearly Recap

As with every year-end, here's the official recap of Starknet's thrilling journey in 2023.

📢 What About the Ecosystem?

🔹 A Crazy Month at AVNU

December was a whirlwind for AVNU, with two major integrations:

• Argent X Swap feature

• Nostra Finance Swap feature

They also launched three new features:

• Safe and Degen Mode

• Referral

• Gas Estimator

And reached a huge milestone:

• $1 Billion in trading volume 👇️ 

🔹 EVM Implemented in Cairo 1.0

Following Cairo 0, Kakarot has now successfully rewritten all EVM opcodes in Cairo 1.0 👇️

🔹 Nostra Leaderboard

In addition to launching its new swap feature powered by AVNU, Nostra has also introduced a dynamic leaderboard to gamify user activity 👇️

🔹 Starkguardian Enhancing Starknet Security

Starkguardian has announced its audit service, beginning with the audit of AVNU contracts 👇️

🔹 ZKX Mainnet and DAO

ZKX revealed its plans to launch the Mainnet of its Perp DEX in Q1 2024. You can find more details about the roadmap here.

To enhance community involvement, ZKX also announced the introduction of its DAO through a contribution program. To take part of it 👇️ 

🔹 New Projects on Starknet's Mainnet and Testnet

This month, four projects launched on Starknet's Mainnet:

• The hybrid AMM combining Uniswap v2 with stablepools, StarkDeFi 

• The NFT infrastructure project NFTScan, providing insights and data about the Starknet NFT market

• Ninth_GG's new game

• The On-chain reputation platform Nomis

For Testnets, three new games are available:

• The galactic game Nogame

• The open-world adventure D'Islands

• The strategic combat game Block_Heroes

🔹 New Projects Alert: Every month, new projects emerge or kick-start their journey on Starknet. Here is a list of my latest findings:

• StarkGaze, a Yield Aggregator

• 7 Gaming Projects building on Top of Realms

• A snipping bot on Starknet

📰 Some of the Best Content of the Month

🔹 Starknet in 2023

This year, Starknet has undergone significant evolution in terms of metrics, updates, movements from the Foundation, and the rapid development of its ecosystem. To ensure you don't miss anything, here's a comprehensive thread summarizing everything you need to know about this year and what's coming in 2024 👇

🔹 Updated Ecosystem Map

Discover the landscape of projects building on Starknet as of December 23, 2023, with this updated ecosystem map 👇

🔹 Starknet Starter Pack

For those eager to navigate this sea of dApps, here's a complete starter pack to kickstart your adventure in the best way possible 👇️ 

🔹 A New, More Accurate Method to Track Starknet's Performance Evolution

While Transactions Per Second (TPS) is a useful metric for gauging network activity and capacity, it doesn't fully capture Starknet's unique functionality introduced by Multicall (which gathers multiple interactions into a single transaction). Enter UOPS 👇

🔹 Gaming Stream

Starknet is renowned for its dynamic gaming ecosystem and the numerous innovations within it. Nurstar rounds off the year with a two-hour stream dedicated to this sector 👇

🔹 All Nurstar Threads in One Place

Speaking of Nurstar, if you're interested in deep diving into Starknet projects, here's a compilation of all the threads he's written 👇

His latest piece covers the Nimbora pooling protocol 👇️ 

🔹 The Three Major Challenges Facing Starknet and How They're Being Addressed

Despite our enthusiasm for the Starknet ecosystem, financial markets demand objectivity. Here's a thread outlining the three primary challenges facing Starknet and the plans in place to tackle them 👇

Moreover, a key step in these resolutions is the upcoming STRK token 👇

👀 Stay on the Pulse of Starknet - Never Miss an alpha again!

Join my Starknet community Discord to stay up-to-date with all the latest news from the Starknet ecosystem and be among the first to know all the important news. Whether you're new to or experienced with Starknet, this free Discord community is perfect for you, and will help you become a true Starknet OG.

Don't delay and join us now 👇️

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

Thank you for reading, and see you next month for this monthly recap. ⏳

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