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. Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here. Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices