Ethereum scaling protocol Starknet expects to increase throughput and lower fees on its layer 2 rollup network by introducing parallel transaction capabilities in 2024, Cointelegraph reports.
The Layer 2 rollup released an updated roadmap on March 20 following the successful implementation of the Ethereum Dencun hard fork. Upgrades to the network introduced several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), chief among them EIP-4844.
EIP-4844 introduces a new way for rollups to add cheaper data to blocks by using blob space as an alternative to storing call data.
Using call data to store cryptographic proofs of bundled transactions off-chain has historically been prohibitively expensive because all Ethereum nodes have to process the data that exists on-chain indefinitely.
Following the implementation of Dencun, Starknet and other significant Ethereum aggregates hope to accelerate their ability to send proofs directly into the blob space. The network was one of the first to enable blob functionality on the same day as the hard fork, with reports a few hours later of a significant drop in user fees.
Starknet’s compatibility with EIP-4844 results in an average per-transaction fee of $0.017 for transactions on the protocol. The team has previously expanded the block size of its rollup protocol and reduced fees by approximately 25% with the release of Starknet v0.13.0 in early 2024.
Starknet’s next version update, scheduled for Q2 2024, will include transaction parallelization, which will enable the network to perform concurrent independent transactions.
The update will allow Starknet to handle more transactions simultaneously, which is expected to increase the throughput of its network and speed up finalization.
Starknet also plans to further reduce fees on its network with version 0.14.0, expected to be released in late 2024, subject to the long-term impact of EIP-4844 and performance improvements to its own protocol.
The year-end update will include three data availability-focused upgrades in its stack. Volition is said to facilitate hybrid data availability on Starknet, allowing decentralized applications to store data on Starknet rather than Ethereum’s base layer.
Application recursion is expected to allow developers to batch send proof of data storage from multiple Starknet blocks to Ethereum. This upgrade is claimed to reduce L1 costs and feed reductions for end users.
Data availability compression is also in development, which will reduce Starknet’s data footprint on Ethereum. Starknet is exploring two different recursive methods to enable this functionality.
