Starknet Hits ’Stage One’ Decentralization Milestone—Now Leads ZK-Rollups in TVL
Starknet just leveled up—Ethereum’s scaling darling hits its first major decentralization checkpoint, officially leaving ’training wheels’ mode. And the market’s voting with its wallet: it now holds more value than any other ZK-rollup. Cue the VC fist-pumps.
Behind the numbers: Total Value Locked (TVL) doesn’t lie. While other chains tout ’decentralization in progress,’ Starknet’s tech stack is actually walking the walk—even if the crypto bros won’t stop arguing about what ’real’ decentralization looks like.
The kicker? This milestone drops right as institutional money starts sniffing around layer-2s. Coincidence? Probably not. (Wall Street’s still trying to explain ZK-proofs to their compliance teams, but hey—progress.)
Layer-2 networks ranked by total value locked. Source: L2beat
Fraud proofs assume transactions are invalid until proven valid, while validity proofs assume transactions are valid only if proven valid with cryptographic evidence.
“Our goal is for the training wheels to come off completely and to reach Stage 2 decentralization on Ethereum, and simultaneously steam forward with our work on Bitcoin too,” said Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, the developer behind Starknet.
“Stage 2” decentralization is the point where the network will be fully autonomous and community-governed. Only three small layer-2 scaling platforms have reached this stage, according to L2beat.
Buterin introduced the concept of “training wheels” or three stages for Ethereum scaling rollup projects at various phases of development in 2022.
Base leads layer-2 ecosystem
The Coinbase layer-2 network Base is the leader of the sector in terms of value locked, with $14.7 billion, giving it a market share of 33%. Comparatively, Starknet has a market share of 1.4%.
The total value secured onchain in the layer-2 ecosystem is $44.2 billion. The figure has jumped recently as the value of Ether (ETH $2,566) has gained, but is down 20% so far this year.
