Starknet to settle on Bitcoin and Ethereum to unify the chains

Ethereum layer 2 Starknet is laying the groundwork to settle on Bitcoin and Ethereum to unify the two largest blockchains on a single layer.

The Starknet Foundation said in its March 11 Bitcoin roadmap that it’s aiming for Starknet to become Bitcoin’s execution layer, scaling it from 13 transactions per second to thousands, reducing blocks and gas fees, and creating a better user experience.

“Most Bitcoin today sits static in wallets and exchanges, constrained by the limitations of the network’s original design: a lack of scalability and an inability to natively support applications beyond simple buying, selling, and transferring,” the foundation said.

It added that while some investors view Bitcoin as “digital gold,” it believes “there is a demand for utilizing Bitcoin for purposes beyond that.”

Previously, StarkWare CEO Eli Ben Sasson, the company behind the STARK proof that contributes to the development of Starknet, said OP_CAT, a Satoshi-era opcode for unlocking programmability on Bitcoin that was disabled over security concerns, would allow Starknet to settle on the Bitcoin blockchain. 

If successful, Starknet said the move would allow developers to build applications on the Bitcoin network through smart contracts and enable applications such as staking, borrowing, lending, leveraged trading, and yield farming.

As part of the announcement, StarkWare said it has joined the growing number of firms in creating a Bitcoin (BTC) reserve, holding a growing portion of its treasury in crypto.

Starknet will also team up with Bitcoin Web3 wallet Xverse, whose founder and CEO Ken Liao said the integration, slated for the second quarter of 2025, will achieve Bitcoin’s “DeFi take-off moment.”

Xverse said wallets need to be more than just storage solutions; and allow easy access to Bitcoin’s growing utility. Liao said in a statement that the endgame is trustless DeFi on Bitcoin.

Related: Unknown attacker causes headaches during Pectra upgrade on Sepolia

“In today’s environment, there is a temptation for wallet teams to say, ‘yeah, let’s just focus on making it easier for people to use Bitcoin as a store of value,’” Liao said.

“But the long-term future of Bitcoin also includes utility, and that’s why layer 2 solutions must reach the public via the wallets they actually use,” he added.

Meanwhile, in a March 11 X space discussing Starknet’s plan, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said a proper Bitcoin L2 that can satisfy the needed security properties would “make crypto payments great again, and all those use cases can work.”

Starknet on Bitcoin and Ethereum https://t.co/tCyQDHY7Yr

— StarkWare 🐺🐱 (@StarkWareLtd) March 11, 2025

Buterin said there is a “lot of value” in enabling the trustless flow of assets between the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems, such as easier paths for decentralized exchange.

“If you go back to the white paper, Bitcoin was meant to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, and obviously, layer 1 is not nearly scalable enough for that,” Buterin said.

“I think we’ve also seen some of the limits of the Lightning Network and that kind of approach.“

Magazine: MegaETH launch could save Ethereum… but at what cost?