The four applications dYdX, DiversiFi, Immmutable X and Sorare, which are expanded with StarkEx, account for 35% of the market share in L2. How do these applications perform after adopting the StarkWare expansion solution? What are the recent developments of StarkWare?
Written by: Karen
As dYdX’s transaction volume surged 20 times from the previous month to USD 14 billion, StarkEx, the key expansion solution that drove its platform performance, once again attracted the close attention of community users. Today we will talk about the platform performance of the four Layer 2 applications (dYdX, DiversiFi, Immutable X, and Sorare) that use the StarkWare expansion solution, and the progress of its ZK-Rollup solution StarkNet and Layer2 expansion engine StarkEx.
StarkWare has made greater breakthroughs in both the development and adoption of the expansion solution, and has completed multiple milestones. According to StarkWare CEO Uri Kolodny, as of August 22, the total number of transactions settled by StarkEX exceeded 10 million, and the number of registered users exceeded 100,000. Among them, the number of transactions in the last week of August alone was close to 1 million. Combined with Etherscan data, it was found that the transactions settled through StarkEx accounted for more than 11% of the total number of transactions in Ethereum Layer 1 that week. In the week of the previous day, the ratio was 7.2%.
On the other hand, according to data from L2BEAT, as of 17:00 on September 4th, on L2, the total market share of the four applications dYdX, DiversiFi, Immmutable X and Sorare driven by StarkEx exceeded 35%, of which only dYdX It occupies nearly 30% of the share, and the lock-up volume has reached nearly 300 million U.S. dollars.
In terms of technology, StarkWare launched StarkNet Alpha 2 earlier this month, paying more attention to supporting the combined interaction between smart contracts, and also optimized the testing framework to allow developers to test the deployment and interaction of StarkeNet contracts locally. In addition, StarkWare launched in July the main StarkEx 3.0 mainnet, which allows L2 users to easily interact with L1, and also proposed a trustless side chain to StarkEx bridge.
Before understanding the progress of StarkWare, we will first explore the platform performance of these four L2 applications after adopting the StarkEx expansion solution.
dYdX: August transaction volume surged 20 times from the previous month
The decentralized derivatives trading platform dYdX launched the internal beta version using StarkEx at the end of February this year, and officially launched the L2 online version in April. After adopting StarkEx, the transaction data of dYdX has grown exponentially.
In terms of transaction volume, according to Metabase data , the cumulative transaction volume of dYdX on L2 at the end of April was 580 million U.S. dollars, the cumulative transaction volume at the end of July reached 3.4 billion U.S. dollars, and the single-month transaction volume in August reached a record high of 14 billion U.S. dollars. The month-on-month increase reached 20 times, and the current cumulative transaction volume has reached 18 billion U.S. dollars. However, the surge in dYdX trading volume in August was largely related to the launch of transaction mining.
dYdX L2 transaction volume, source: Metabase
At the same time, the open position of dYdX also set a new record high on August 29, reaching 310 million US dollars, which has now fallen slightly. In addition, since August, the revenue generated by dYdX has also achieved a quantum leap, and the revenue in the most recent week has reached 500 US dollars.
dYdX open positions, source: Metabase
dYdX revenue, source: Metabase
DiversiFi: The amount of locked positions increased by 6 times compared with the beginning of the year
DeversiFi is a Layer 2 decentralized trading platform. The decentralized exchange Ethfinex initiated by Bitfinex was renamed. As early as December last year, when StarkEx 2.0 was launched, it announced the adoption and release of an upgraded version.
According to L2BEAT data, at the time of writing, DeversiFi’s locked position was 40.85 million U.S. dollars, an increase of nearly 6 times compared with the beginning of the year.
DeversiFi total lock-up amount, source: L2BEAT
However, it should be noted that DApp.com data shows that DeversiFi has not yet made major breakthroughs in the performance of other platforms. The total transaction volume in the past three years is less than 500 million U.S. dollars. The number of daily contract interactions since June has generally been 30 or less.
DeversiFi platform performance, source: DApp.com
Immutable X: L2 market share is 0.3%
Immutable X is an L2 network NFT trading platform based on StarkWare’s ZK Rollup technology launched by the development company behind the card game Gods Unchained. The Alpha version was released on April 8 this year. The casting and trading services are open to all users this week. Minting and trading NFT with zero gas fee. In addition, Immutable X will start the token sale of IMX on the CoinList platform on September 8.
At present, there is no data analysis website to count the transaction volume of Immutable X. However, according to the tweet released by Immutable on July 22, Immutable X has processed millions of dollars in transaction volume, and more than 250,000 transactions have occurred. NFT transactions. In addition, L2BEAT data shows that Immutable’s market share on L2 is 0.3%.
Sorare: Gas consumption in August was 98.5% less than in May
Sorare is a fantasy football game platform. Players can trade player cards and collect digital collections in the game. StarkWare’s ZK Rollup expansion program will be used at the end of July this year.
After adopting ZK Rollup, Sorare saved more than 98% of gas fees for its users. Uri Kolodny said that Sorare only spent 30 ETH gas fees in August, which was a 98.5% reduction from the approximately 1900 ETH in May.
According to CryptoSlam data , Sorare’s single-day sales reached a historical record of more than US$2 million on February 26 this year, and then fell significantly. Sales of 14.84 million U.S. dollars increased by over 67% from the previous month. Of course, the current trading volume of Sorare and Imumutable X is still low, and most activities are limited to casting.
Sorare sales data, source: CryptSlam
StarkWare recent progress
StarkWare has two main products: ZK-Rollup expansion network StarkNet and L2 expansion engine StarkEx. Among them, StarkEx is regarded as an application scenario of StarkNet. It was deployed on Ethereum in June 2020. It uses STARK technology to provide applications such as DeFi and games. The extended self-custodial transaction currently supports ETH, ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens and synthetic assets, and supports tokens on other EVM-compatible blockchains.
StarkNet Alpha V2 supports communication between smart contracts
StarkWare released the StarkNet Alpha V1 version with L1 and L2 two-way interaction and on-chain data availability on the testnet Ropsten in July. The StarkNet Alpha V2 version will be released after more than two months. An important function of the new version is to support intelligence. The combined interaction between the contracts, which means that each application can directly interact in the StarkNet network. In addition, StarkWare also provides a testing framework that allows developers to test their StarkNet contract deployment and interaction locally, but currently only includes L2 interaction. StarkWare is preparing to launch the Alpha version of the StartNet mainnet for the whitelist application.
Recommended reading: ” Challenge all Rollup expansion plans, what are the advantages of StarkNet? 》
Solve the problem of interaction and liquidity fragmentation between L2 and L1
In addition, StarkWare also launched the StarkEx 3.0 mainnet at the end of March. The most obvious advantage is that it enables L2 users to easily interact with L1. Specific features include L1 Vaults and SHARP. Among them, L1 Vaults can allow StarkEx users to interact with Ethereum addresses and smart The contract address is used for asset interaction, and SHARP (SHARed Prover) can collect transactions from multiple StarkEx-driven applications and package them into a certificate to improve the gas usage rate and transaction confirmation speed of each transaction.
In addition, StarkWare is also cooperating with Loopring to propose a cross-L2 AMM solution and cooperating with Celer to develop the ZK Rollup version of Layer2.finance.
Recommended reading: ” An article to understand StarkWare’s L2 liquidity fragmentation and the interactive cracking method with L1 “
Will build a side chain-StarkEx bridge
In order to meet the demand for funds transfer between the side chain and L2 and solve the problem of liquidity fragmentation, StarkWare relies on the underlying security of Ethereum to propose a trustless and low-cost side chain-StarkEx bridge solution (Sidechain-to -StarkEx Bridge).
Take the withdrawal of funds from StarkEx to the side chain as an example. After a user submits an off-chain fund withdrawal request to the app on StarkEx, the app will lock the specified asset class and quantity in the interoperability contract on the side chain and order StarkEx to Related assets are transferred from the user’s Vault to the App’s Vault, and then the user signs the fund withdrawal request and activates the interoperability contract on the side chain, and the user obtains funds on the side chain. Finally, the App can execute the transfer request on StarkEx and receive the user’s funds.
This process is trustless, that is to say, before the user gives the operator (App) funds on StarkEx, he has already obtained the funds to be withdrawn on the side chain through processes such as balance verification and user signatures.
StartNet components and ecosystem continue to expand
It is worth noting that StarkNet components and ecosystem are also continuously optimized and developed. Currently StarkWare is working with Ethereum technology provider OpenZeppelin to develop a standardized smart contract library. In addition, Nethermind’s Warp team is adopting the “EVM->Cairo compiler” Converting ERC-20 contracts from EVM byte codes to StarkNet contracts for deployment on StarkNet, the next goal is to transfer arbitrary smart contracts from EVM language Yul to Cairo.
In addition, considering the transaction cost issue, StarkWare also submitted to MakerDAO a proposal to discuss the implementation of the Maker protocol on StarkNet. The first phase hopes to build a DAI bridge on StarkNet within 3 months, and the second phase will enable DAI casting on StarkNet.
Although there are currently only 4 platforms that use StarkEx, and transactions settled through StarkEx rely heavily on dYdX, StarkWare is also continuously developing its ecosystem and key technologies, seeking to provide low-cost expansion solutions for more DeFi projects. With more and more trading platforms integrating StarkEx expansion engines, StarkNet’s path development progress has transitioned to the stage of composability and decentralization between applications, and is committed to solving the problem of interaction between L2 and L1, L2 and sidechains. With the issue of fund transfer and fragmentation, its ecosystem is expected to develop by leaps and bounds.
