StarkWare improves scalability and privacy in blockchains using STARK technology, a family of cryptographic proofs that are zero-knowledge, succinct, transparent (no need for a trusted setup), and post-quantum secure. StarkWare’s software stack supports fast and trustless generation of proofs of computational integrity for general computation (which occurs off-chain) and their verification (which takes place on-chain).
StarkWare was founded in January 2018 by Eli Ben-Sasson (co-inventor of STARK, previously prof. of CS at Technion, founding scientist of Zcash), Uri Kolodny (serial entrepreneur), Michael Riabzev (co-inventor of STARK), and Alessandro Chiesa (founding scientist of Zcash and prof. of CS at UC Berkeley).
StarkWare has secured investments from several VCs in the crypto space across three equity rounds (totaling $111 million). It has also received a $12 million grant from the Ethereum Foundation to help scale the Ethereum network. Investors include Vitalik Buterin, Paradigm, Pantera, Sequoia, Founders Fund, DCVC, Wing, Floodgate, Intel Capital, Atomico, ConsenSys, Multicoin, Polychain, Naval Ravikant, and others.
In June 2020, StarkWare’s scaling solution, StarkEx, launched on Ethereum’s mainnet. As of March 2021, StarkWare has not launched a token and has 40+ employees.
