L2 network Starknet will reduce fees and increase speeds in the next three months

What’s new? The team at Starknet Layer 2 (L2) network based on the Ethereum blockchain intends to quadruple transaction speeds and reduce fees fivefold within three months. The improved throughput will allow Starknet to compete with the Solana Layer 1 (L1) blockchain.

Material by Cointelegraph

What else is known? StarkWare CEO Eli Ben Sasson specified that Starknet’s throughput will reach 1000 transactions per second (TPS). According to him, the network improvements will be achieved through better compilation and faster execution in Cairo, the programming language for Starknet’s smart contracts.

On October 29, the network’s daily average reached a record 129 TPS. Starknet can reach 200 or more TPS at short intervals, and in a recent controlled stress test, the figure jumped to 857 TPS.

Ben Sasson also noted that a five-fold reduction in transaction fees would make Starknet the cheapest L2 network. This goal is a priority for the company as it expects a surge in blockchain activity, which is driving up gas prices.

At the moment, Starknet fees average $0,002 per transaction. According to analytics platform Dune, Starknet ranks third on the list of cheapest Ethereum-L2 solutions over the past 30 days after Optimism and Blast.

StarkWare also plans to offer an OP_CAT improvement for the Bitcoin network, making Starknet the first native L2 network for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ben Sasson expects this upgrade to launch within the next 12 months.

At the end of February, Starknet launched a native token STRK to pay fees and participate in voting on project development and staking. Currently, the asset is ranked 106th in the cryptocurrency market capitalization ranking with a market cap of $976,14 million and is trading at $0,4655, having lost 0,4% over the day. Weekly growth amounted to 2,3%, and since the beginning of the year, the price of the asset has increased by 133%.

Meanwhile, in July, derivatives protocol ZKX, the largest on Starknet, announced it was shutting down due to low activity. The lack of revenue did not allow the team to cover operating expenses.

K33: Sui network can become Solana’s main competitor due to technical performance

The exchange rate of the native token SUI against SOL has risen by 115% since the beginning of August

Read more

As for Solana, in May it was recognized by the experts of the CoinGecko aggregator as a record-breaker in terms of speed among all the L1 and L2 networks with an indicator of 1054 TPS.

Since the end of last year, activity in the Solana network has jumped sharply as a result of the hype around meme tokens. The network has become the most popular network for creating humorous coins due to its speed and low prices, as well as the PumpFun ecosystem launchpad, where any user can launch their own asset for less than $2 in a few clicks.

In 2024, Solana became the leader in terms of meme tokens listed on the largest crypto exchange, Binance.

As a result of the increase in activity, Solana began to overtake the Ethereum blockchain in a number of indicators. For example, Solana surpassed Ethereum in terms of trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in October: $52,156 billion versus $41,499 billion.

On November 18, Solana-based dApps recorded record fees amid the ongoing meme coin craze. According to DefiLlama, five of the top ten crypto protocols in terms of fees collected are powered by Solana. Among the leaders are the Raydium exchange and liquid staking protocol Jito.

The Solana (SOL) native token ranks fourth in the overall cryptocurrency ranking with a capitalization of $114,9 billion and is trading at $242,15, having added 1,9% overnight. Weekly growth was 15,3%, up over 140% since the beginning of the year.