Ethereum Scaling Startup Reportedly Triples Valuation in 4 Months

The Ethereum layer-2 developer is raising at least $100 million, Israeli newspaper Calcalist reported

article-image

StarkWare co-founders Uri Kolodny (left) and Eli Ben-Sasson (right)

share

key takeaways

  • “Since StarkNet was launched, interest from devs and investors has gone through the roof,” an anonymous company source told Blockworks
  • In an interview with Blockworks in November 2021, one of the four co-founders said that they “didn’t need the money” from its Series C, but the funds helped them grow their operations even faster

Ethereum layer-2 developer StarkWare is raising at least $100 million, for a valuation of $6 billion, Israeli newspaper Calacalist reported.

StarkWare declined to comment Thursday. However, a company source, who spoke under anonymity to Blockworks, said they couldn’t confirm it, “but it sounds entirely plausible.”

“Since StarkNet was launched, interest from devs and investors has gone through the roof,” the source said.

The new valuation is triple its previous $2 billion valuation from just four months ago, when the company raised $50 million in a Series C round led by Sequoia Capital.

“It seems to be the idea of letting anyone build Web3 that’s caught the imagination of venture capital,” the source said. “So, while the numbers cited are high, if I arrive at work and hear it’s accurate, I won’t be surprised.”

StarkWare is a four-year-old startup — created by four co-founders Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Uri Kolodny and Michael Riabzev — that offers blockchain scaling services through “STARK” proofs, which are Ethereum-based products using rollups technology invented by Ben-Sasson and Riabzev.

The StarkWare-based solutions include its two products — StarkEx, a permissioned validity rollup, and StarkNet, a permissionless decentralized zero-knowledge rollup  — which aim to increase speed and reduce the cost of Ethereum gas fees.

The largest dApp on StarkEx, by total-value-locked (TVL), is decentralized derivatives exchange dydx, with roughly $1 billion in TVL, according to DeFi Llama.

Two weeks ago, StarkNet began deploying decentralized apps, or dApps, with zero-knowledge rollup technology to help alleviate the blockchain’s scaling problem. 

In an interview with Blockworks in November 2021, Kolodny said StarkNet “didn’t need the money” from the Series C, but the funds helped them grow their operations faster.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.jpg

Research

The BitcoinOS team is the first to have developed and posted a ZK-compressed proof on the Bitcoin network. Other proof verification efforts have been limited to the Signet or testnet deployments. Their work has resulted in the development of BitSNARK, a software library for ZK-compressed fraud proofs on the Bitcoin network. The project aims to provide a horizontal scaling solution, offering a one-stop shop for teams interested in developing a rollup on Bitcoin. This approach shares similarities with the horizontal tech stack scaling in other ecosystems like Cosmos and Optimism, particularly in its focus on simplified verification, bridging standards, and lightweight interoperability.

/

article-image

A16z’s State of Crypto report shows that DeFi has the largest number of daily active addresses, with stablecoins following closely behind

article-image

G2 is delivering real-world performance breakthroughs at 50-100 Mgas/s, Conduit says

article-image

World Liberty Financial’s token sale debuted just as an absurd AI-fueled memecoin captured crypto’s attention

article-image

Coinbase hired History Associates in 2023 to assist in retrieving records from the SEC and FDIC

article-image

Hours after pledging to support Black men’s rights to safely invest in crypto, VP Harris’s Monday night speech mentioned blockchain zero times