StarkWare launched the open source ZK prover at ETH Denver

Starware has announced the launch of Stwo, an open-source service based on zero-knowledge (ZK) technology that aims to increase authentication latency and reduce transaction fees for end users.

A prover is required on Starknet to compress transactions by generating cryptographic proofs. By generating instant confirmations, Stwo reduces the cost of Starkware's processing, ultimately resulting in lower user fees, according to a February 29 press release shared with Cointelegraph.

According to Starkware COO Oren Katz, the new Stwo opens up new possibilities for the protocol. he said:

“Stwo brings new opportunities to scale. And since it's open source from day 1, it's available to everyone.”

Anyone can run the open source prover and codebase for developers who want to implement Stark-based systems. Over time, Starknet and Starknet app chains will automatically reap the benefits of Sto, reducing latency and processing costs, ultimately lowering user fees.

“The user is the magic of STARK technology. It will play a key role in expanding Ethereum,” said Katz. “Implementation of Circle STARK by Stwo will help increase the scale of Ethereum by efficiently generating additional proofs.”

Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK-proofs) are cryptographic protocols that allow a user to prove specific information to another user without revealing his or her own information.

StarkWare's Starknet ZK-rollup is currently the fourth largest Layer 2 rollup, with a total value of $1.33 billion locked in, according to L2Beat data. Starknet is the largest ZK package by TVL, followed by zkSync Era at $868 million TVL.

The protocol says the Starknet stack will eventually be fully open-sourced, in line with their vision of a decentralized, permissionless layer-2 blockchain network.

The demand for privacy protection technologies based on ZK-proofs is growing. Animoka-backed humanitarian protocol launched ZKP-powered biometric palm recognition technology for Web3 identity authentication on February 20. This is a less intrusive biometric authentication method developed for iris scanning.

Humanity Protocol received funding from more than 20 venture capitalist firms on February 28, including companies such as Hashed, CMCC, Cypher Capital, Foresight Ventures and Mechanism Capital.

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