Can Top Crypto Projects Strengthen Effectively Before Q-Day Comes Or major advances in AI in mathematics?
This is the big question, and one that is being debated more than ever following Justin Drake’s recent ” “.bunker mode» comments.
Only time will tell if these remarks underrated Or overrated the timeline of breakthroughs in mathematics. Regardless, quantum and AI threats are real. These are not distant, abstract dangers, and some crypto projects take these specters more seriously than others.
Among these projects is Starknet, whose builders made waves last week by announcing that they were consider a transition the chain from an Ethereum L2 to a standalone L1 network.
For what? To harden against quantum and AI faster than on-chain can while being directly tied to Ethereum.
As some of you may remember, StarkWare post-quantum roadmap as of June 30, no L1 has launched, and StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson has since pointed out that this idea has recently evolved due to growing concern that traditional crypto could be broken much sooner than the crypto industry expected.
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The logic is that as L1, Starknet could set the pace of its security upgrades rather than following Ethereum’s, putting it on track for what it touts as “the first fully quantum-resistant network,” targeted for 2027. So why can’t Starknet get there as L2?
The June roadmap shows why. It divides the quantum migration of Starknet into three phases. The first two (e.g. swapping the Pedersen hash for quantum-resistant BLAKE2, adding post-quantum signatures like Falcon-512, and migrating existing contracts) are for Starknet to execute, while the third phase is not, as it covers two elements that Starknet is effectively borrowing from Ethereum. Namely:
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Deck messagingwhich uses vulnerable quantum elliptic curve calls to move messages between the two chains. StarkWare is explicit that removing these calls before the Ethereum migration would break the bridge.
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Blob datathat is, state data that Starknet publishes to Ethereum via blobs, anchored by elliptic curve-based KZG commits. A broken KZG would harm data availability according to StarkWare, not the solidity of the state of Starknet, which remains guarded by STARK evidence. Yet the June roadmap leaves this fix entirely to Ethereum.
That said, it may be a few years before Ethereum completes its own project. post-quantum evolutionswhich would put key elements of Starknet’s defensive roadmap on ice for at least that long.
This is a point on which other projects will undoubtedly also be confronted. Since a rollup inherits the cryptography of the L1 as well as its security, its quantum timeline is effectively whichever is slower, its own or that of the L1.
So, simply put, Starknet expects to hit this wall because it can do its part of the job much faster. What’s also interesting is that some of Ethereum’s quantum plans will make it more like Starknet.
For example, Ethereum continues EIP-8141which would, among other things, allow accounts to adopt quantum-secure signatures on their own timelines rather than waiting for a network-wide migration. Starknet, on the other hand, has had native account abstraction (i.e. each account is a programmable smart contract) for years. This is why S2morrow could already build a post-quantum Starknet account around Falcon-512 signatures without protocol changes.
Additionally, Ethereum plans to swap its BLS validator signatures for leanXMSS, a hash-based system, and compress larger results with zk proofs via leanVM. He Also lists STARK-based commitments among the main candidates to replace KZG. STARKs are hash-based by design and put the “Stark” in Starknet.
In kind, over the past two years Starknet has assembled much of the machinery it would need to become an L1, such as STRK staking, multiple sequencers, etc. These coins were originally designed to make Starknet a better decentralized extension of Ethereum, but they significantly reduce the L1 issue of the chain.
From what I can tell, the missing pieces at the moment are data availability (i.e. where transaction data is published so anyone can rebuild the chain), final settlement, and re-designing the official bridge if necessary.
Speaking of transition, consider how a StarkGate withdrawal works today: funds are only released after Ethereum has verified the withdrawal’s block proof and the corresponding state update has landed on it. In other words, Ethereum verifies Starknet calculations, so Starknet operators cannot forge the state on which the bridged funds depend.
A L1 Starknet could land anywhere on this spectrum, however. It could continue to publish STARK proofs on Ethereum to support a trust-minimizing bridge, or cut the cord altogether. These are very different trust models, so that’s the open question I would watch closely.
Also remember that Starknet has a long launched like a layer that could one day settle both Bitcoin and Ethereum. It’s not the same as leaving Ethereum, but a Starknet L1 bridge proof-connected to both would arguably rhyme more with this vision than break it.
As of yet, nothing official has been released, but it seems clear that an L1 architecture will be the way forward for Starknet. Whatever happens, the channel wants to act as soon as possible, because there may not be later for projects that do not make adjustments in time. Fair enough, I said.
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