StarkWare and the ZK Stack
StarkWare is the most institutionally significant Israeli company in the crypto layer. Its zero-knowledge proof technology powers the most widely-used scaling stack for Ethereum.
Crypto & Cryptography · Netanya · Updated June 28, 2026
StarkWare is the Israeli cryptography company that built the zero-knowledge proof infrastructure on which a substantial share of the Ethereum scaling architecture now runs. Founded in 2018 by Eli Ben-Sasson, Uri Kolodny, Alessandro Chiesa, and Michael Riabzev, the company developed and commercialized STARK (Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge) cryptography from academic origins into production blockchain infrastructure. The 2022 Series D at $8 billion valuation made StarkWare one of the highest-valued private crypto companies globally at the time. The structural ZK-rollup architecture that StarkWare and competitors built has reshaped Ethereum economics.
The Founding
StarkWare was founded by Eli Ben-Sasson and Uri Kolodny in Netanya in 2018, with co-founders Alessandro Chiesa (UC Berkeley faculty, also a co-founder of Zcash) and Michael Riabzev. Ben-Sasson is a Technion computer science professor whose decade-long research programme on probabilistic proofs and the broader theoretical computer-science literature on succinct arguments produced the STARK construction.
The academic origin of StarkWare distinguishes it within the crypto-infrastructure cohort. The founding team brought deep theoretical computer-science depth into a commercial environment that has often privileged engineering speed over cryptographic rigour. The structural advantage of StarkWare's position has been the depth of its theoretical foundation.
STARK Cryptography
STARKs are a class of zero-knowledge proof system that allows a prover to demonstrate the correctness of a computation to a verifier without revealing the computation's inputs and with proof verification substantially cheaper than re-executing the computation. The technical advantages of STARKs over the earlier SNARK constructions include transparency (no trusted setup ceremony), post-quantum security (resistance to quantum computing attacks on cryptographic primitives), and scalability (the proof size and verification time scale favourably with computation size).
The disadvantages relative to SNARKs are larger proof sizes — STARKs produce larger artifacts than the equivalent SNARK proofs for similar computations — which translates into higher on-chain storage and verification gas costs.
The structural trade-off has produced a multi-architecture environment in the broader ZK ecosystem. StarkWare runs the STARK architecture. zkSync, Scroll, and Linea use SNARK-based architectures. Polygon zkEVM operates a hybrid model. The competition across architectures has driven rapid technical progress across all of them.
The Commercial Product Stack
StarkWare's commercial output runs through three principal products.
StarkEx is the application-specific scaling solution that powers several large Ethereum applications. The largest deployment historically was dYdX, the decentralized derivatives exchange that used StarkEx as the proving layer for its Layer 2 architecture. (dYdX subsequently migrated to its own Cosmos-based chain.) Immutable X, the NFT and gaming Layer 2, uses StarkEx. Sorare, the fantasy-sports NFT platform, uses StarkEx.
StarkNet is the general-purpose ZK-rollup Layer 2 protocol that operates as a public Ethereum scaling network. StarkNet uses the Cairo programming language — a Turing-complete language designed specifically for STARK-provable computation — as its native execution environment. The network has been operational since 2021 and processes user-facing transactions across a broad application set including DeFi protocols, gaming, and identity.
Cairo, the programming language, is structurally significant as a developer infrastructure layer. Cairo allows application developers to write programs that compile to STARK-provable form. The language has its own developer ecosystem, tooling, and learning curve. Cairo adoption is one of the structural questions for StarkNet's broader competitive position.
The Series D and Valuation Arc
StarkWare raised its Series D in May 2022 at an $8 billion valuation, led by Greenoaks Capital and Coatue. The round was structured at the peak of the 2021-2022 crypto venture cycle and made StarkWare one of the highest-valued private crypto infrastructure companies globally.
The subsequent crypto-market drawdown across 2022-2023 reset valuations across the sector. Several peer crypto infrastructure companies repriced down substantially during the period. StarkWare has not publicly raised at a different valuation since the Series D, and the company's revenue trajectory and operating position are not publicly disclosed in granular detail.
The structural position of StarkWare has held through the cycle. The cryptographic infrastructure produced by the company remains operationally significant in the Ethereum ecosystem. The commercial-economics question — whether the company can monetize the infrastructure position into a financial outcome that justifies the historical valuation — is the central question facing the company in 2026.
The Ethereum Scaling Position
The broader Ethereum scaling architecture has consolidated around the rollup model — Layer 2 networks that execute transactions off the main Ethereum chain and post cryptographic proofs of correctness back to the main chain. ZK-rollups and optimistic rollups are the two principal architectures. StarkWare operates in the ZK-rollup category.
The structural strategic position is that Ethereum scaling depends on rollup infrastructure, that ZK-rollups offer cryptographic advantages over optimistic rollups for several application categories, and that StarkWare is one of the principal commercial providers of ZK-rollup infrastructure. The position is real but is contested by multiple credible competitors — zkSync (Matter Labs), Scroll, Linea (Consensys), Polygon zkEVM, and the broader ZK research community.
The Ben-Sasson Position
Eli Ben-Sasson is one of the most cited contemporary computer scientists in cryptography. His academic position at the Technion, the depth of his published research, and his role in the foundational theoretical work on STARKs give him a profile inside the ZK research community that is structurally different from most crypto-company founder profiles.
The Ben-Sasson position reinforces the StarkWare strategic differentiation. The company is not a venture-built crypto product company that hired academic advisors. It is an academic research output that built a commercial company around the research. The structural advantage shows in the depth of the technical work and in the company's continued role in the ZK research literature.
The Israeli Crypto Context
StarkWare sits at the structural top of the Israeli cryptocurrency-and-blockchain cohort. The broader Israeli crypto ecosystem includes Fireblocks (institutional custody and infrastructure), eToro (retail trading), Aleph.im, Curve Finance founder relationships, and a long tail of smaller companies. The Israeli crypto cohort has been one of the densest globally per capita.
The Israeli regulatory environment for cryptocurrency has progressively tightened across the past several years, with the Israeli Securities Authority and the Capital Markets Authority producing structured frameworks for token issuance, exchange operations, and digital-asset custody. StarkWare operates as cryptographic infrastructure and is less directly exposed to the consumer-protection regulatory framework that affects exchanges and consumer-facing applications.
What 2026 Tracks
Three threads matter. First, the StarkNet adoption trajectory and the question of whether Cairo and the StarkNet network capture sufficient developer mind-share to compete commercially with the SNARK-based Layer 2 competitors. Second, the broader Ethereum roadmap evolution — particularly the danksharding and proto-danksharding upgrades that affect rollup economics — and the position of STARK-based architectures within the evolved Ethereum environment. Third, the financial performance of StarkWare and the question of capital cycle — whether the company raises additional capital, executes an IPO, or operates as a self-sustaining private infrastructure company.
StarkWare is one of the structural cryptographic infrastructure companies of the broader crypto economy. The company continues.
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