Bankless - StarkWare Sessions #1 | The StarkNet Fathers Uri Kolodny & Eli Ben-Sasson

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Sometimes, the frontier is at a crypto conference. We’re returning from our adventures in Tel Aviv with nine exclusive interviews with some of the key players in the StarkNet space.  Wish you could make it to all the crypto conferences, but don't have the time? Don't worry, Bankless brings the frontier to you. In this episode, we’re talking to Uri Kolodny and Eli Ben-Sasson, the co-founders of StarkWare and the fathers of the StarkNet ecosystem. We take a high-level overview of the emerging network state, and what we can expect from this community looking forward. ------ 📣 MetaMask Learn  https://bankless.cc/metamaskshow  ------ 🚀 JOIN THE NATION:  https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/subscribe  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken  🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🚁 EARNIFI | CLAIM YOUR UNCLAIMED AIRDROPS https://bankless.cc/earnifi   👻 PHANTOM | CROSS-CHAIN WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom  ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 5:00 A Network State 8:00 Starknet Governance 12:30 Technical Minds 15:30 Integrations 18:20 Use Cases 20:30 Looking Forward 23:20 Day in the Life 27:40 Friendship ----- Resources:  Uri Kolodny https://twitter.com/ukolodny  Eli Ben-Sasson https://twitter.com/EliBenSasson  StarkNet https://starkware.co/starknet/  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and the internet finance. And sometimes that frontier of internet money is found at a conference, which is why last weekend I flew out to tell Aviv Israel to attend the Starkware sessions, a two-day event hosted by Starkware to bring the greater Starkware and Starknet ecosystem together, to meet, learn, discuss, and build the future of Starknet. And as you might be able to tell, I have totally lost my voice from doing all of these interviews that I've brought back to share with you all here in the Bankless Nation. I personally wanted to go to the Starkware sessions because my understanding and comprehension of this Starkware ecosystem is not as strong as my understandings of other parts of the Ethereum ecosystem.

And this makes sense when you learn about the design choices that Starkware has made. They've built their own developer language and their own virtual machine instead of using Solidity and the EVM like most other Layer 2s and other Alt Layer 1s out there. Why do they do this? What benefits does that bring? How much friction does that make for developers? How do Starknet developers feel about the protocol they're building on? How much ownership does the Starknet community feel about the platform that they're all creating together? These questions and many more are the questions that I saw answers for during my short time in Tel Aviv

and why I wanted to go to Starkware sessions in the first place. And I certainly feel like I've got these questions answered. But instead of just telling you what my conclusions are, instead I'm bringing back nine interviews I did with various stakeholders and builders of the Starknet ecosystem. So you can conclude for yourself what you think about what's being built over on the frontier of Stark World. I interviewed Uri Kalladne and Ellie Bandsassan, the founders of Starkware, and who I'm warmly calling the dads of Starknet. And I ask them about their perspectives of the network that they have spawned here.

And by network, I don't just mean protocol. I also mean community. Both Uri and Ellie understand that what they've built has become much more than just a technology. it's also become a movement, which has been exemplified by the community that has come to surround them. I also interviewed a governance steward who's a member of the Starkware Foundation, but who's more part of the Starknet community than the Starkware team. And I asked him about how he thinks the future of Starknet community ownership will play out. I did two interviews about smart contract wallets and account abstraction,

Madi from Bravo's and Yoav from the EF, so you'll learn about the frontier of smart contract wallets in these interviews as well. I also interviewed the SISMO team, who's building an identity and privacy system using zero knowledge proofs, I talked to cartridge, a platform that's building the building blocks that all Starknet game developers will need. There's also Herodotus, who's building out what's called storage proofs, which opened up my brain to a world of possibilities I didn't think possible. I interviewed only dust, which if you're a developer looking to get started making money developing on Starknet, definitely listen to that interview. I talked to the

Starknet ID team, Starknet's native identity system, and also interviewed Igno Yama, who's building out ZK-proof chips to ensure that individuals can run ZK-proofs themselves at home, much like the same ethos of Ethereum-staking. I hope you enjoy all of these interviews. At Bankless, we try and bring the frontier of crypto to you in a fun and digestible content format, and I hope that's what I've done here. None of these interviews are longer than 20 minutes, so for those of you that can't keep up with the firehose of Bankless content, maybe these shorter interviews are just a little more digestible. And of course, if you have specific questions about my experiences at the StarCware sessions or about any of the interviews that you're about to listen to, hop into my Q&A channel

inside of the Bankless Nation Discord. This channel is dedicated to asking me directly any questions that you may have about any of the content that you hear on Bankless. So if you're a premium subscriber, make sure you're in the Discord so you can have access to that channel. If you've got a question that you want to ask, feel free to drop it in my channel because I basically live in there these days. So without further ado, let's get into my interviews from the Starkware session, starting with Uri Kalladne and Ellie Ben Sassan, the founders of Starkware, or what I'm calling, the Stark Dads. But first, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make all of these interviews possible. Cracken has been around for almost as long as crypto itself.

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Dot app. And now let's get into the interview. All right, Uri and Ellie of Starkware, the founders of Starkware. The first question I want to ask you guys is, I mean, you guys are big into math, big into all of this stuff that really makes blockchains up and run. But the first thing that I noticed while we're here at Starkware sessions is that this is, this kind of starts to feel like its own network state to use Bologi's words. Like there is a community of people here that feel empowered and, you know, and have agency over building the system of Starknet.

So my first question to you guys, is this what you guys expected when you first started along this journey long, long time ago? I, for one, had no understanding or expectations in this regard. My sort of initial impetus coming into this was actually around verifiable computation. And as someone who actually required, early alluded to this on,

it took me years to sort of appreciate the value, of that. I still see tremendous value of that. But this whole social dimension of Starknet, I would not have known to dream up something so as beautiful as we have here. It's just, we're very fortunate to have it. My answer would be yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it was always clear to us that this is a transformational technology that will, you know, conquer the world. We didn't know, and we still don't know, whether StarCware will be, you know, able to best monetize it, maybe someone that comes later on, or whether we're going exactly down the right route. And so it was very clear to us from the start that this is, you know, going to conquer

the world. Now, no, in the sense that the particulars of how it, like, is evolving, is like, it's so hard to predict I don't know for us like any of this but it's so much fun and it's so uplifting to see this independence like this which also comes with like this

losing control over this thing this is like a child it's way bigger than than what we could conceive of when I first got into Tel Aviv I immediately went over to the hacker house to see what all the hackers were building. And the first thing that happened was a governance workshop where two members of the Starknet Foundation sat everyone down, sat down on the ground, you're like crisscross their legs and answered questions about governance. But it really seems

to be in the early days of Starknet governance as there isn't really like people are learning how to govern, not really, there's no governance roadmap and it's something that really the community has to come together to determine. How are you guys seeing this? How are you guys seeing this? these conversations progress both from the, from the Starkware side of things, and how are the developers of StarkNet, like, auto-organizing themselves? I would like to say that I know enough and am in some sort aware or on top of some of these things, but the frank answer is, no, I don't have enough, like, time and presence of mind to even learn and follow all that it's going. But I have a very deep trust and conviction in

you know I believe this community will transcend the way like governance is done today on blockchain because there's much to hope for and I have good feelings about it but I'm not on top of it I'm not fully up to speed on this stuff but at last count I knew of I think 93 delegates

for you know for Starkey internet, people presenting themselves as delegates, and that's an amazing number in my opinion for something so nascent. And I probably don't know, you know, the vast majority of them, which is wonderful. So, you know, I think it's off to a promising start. There's a ton of work ahead and a ton of experimentation and invention in this regard, in this dimension. I'm sure there are a bunch of ideas in the ecosystem that we can build on and learn from and probably maybe, you know, variations on various themes. And we look forward to that.

I think that's exciting work. And I was watching your guys' opening statements this morning and your opening talk about how we got here in the world of Starks and all of this crazy math, which breaks my brain. And it's very clear that both of you have a very strong understanding of math and cryptography and some of the deep underlying technologies, but no one has an understanding of governance. Like, it's almost an impossible thing to understand.

And I actually kind of think that's perhaps to the best for Starknet, as in if you guys had a grasp on governance as you did on math, it would be a little bit more top down when it needs to be a little bit more chaotic and bottom up. Do you guys have any thoughts about that? I want to say that, okay, blockchain is relatively new, and because of that blockchain governance is still fumbling around a little bit. But the nice thing is that humans have been dabbling with governance since ever. And there are things like, you know, corporations, there are democracies, there are open-source projects that are very inspiring and amazing. So I hope that the Starknet governance takes a little bit from these well-established and successful models, you know, things that resemble corporate governance, open-source projects,

democracy of various sources, representative democracies and things like that. And then, of course, imbue in it, whatever, is new in blockchain, which does operate differently. But there is, there are precedents to take from and be inspired by, and I hope

whoever is doing the governance will take that. The thing that I find most interesting and most challenging, also most menacing in real life in the context of democracies, is finding this balance between, in a democratic sense, giving everyone a voice, yet allowing

experts to have their proper say and the ability to control all sorts of of very fine sort of human interactions from sort of falling off the cliff. He's speaking about current Israeli the politics. And I think that finding that balance is a huge challenge in maintaining that balance as we see is made perhaps an even bigger challenge. So yeah, a lot of work ahead of us. How many people have come out to the Star Quare sessions? Do you guys have those numbers?

I don't know exactly because there are multiple events, et cetera, but I think somewhere between 800 and 1,000 people for a bunch of different events. Some of us, well, organized by a whole bunch of what coalesced around this is this ETH Tel Aviv thingo with fire blocks and a bunch of other companies. And we're very happy to sort of see this whole thing, this whole week sort of come to life. By the way, I don't know when this is going to come out, but if anyone has a chance to go to the hacker house,

that's complete insanity. The energy is, the air is, there's electricity in the air. I really urge you to go there. So if 800 to 1,000-ish people came out, I'm going to guess 80 to 90% of them are very technically minded. And that is probably what every single developer ecosystem looks for to generate inside of their own. Like, that's a success metric.

So first off, congratulations on all the success. What did Starkware and what has StarkNet done well that produced that outcome? What are your guys' strengths that allowed so many people to come out all the way out to Tel Aviv to attend this conference? Well, I think two things. In terms of tooling, I think the emphasis on saying, yes, there is something very appealing and very exciting about the math, but at the end of the day, we're here to serve developers, and we need to offer them the tools that make them happy, and Cairo 1.0 is right around the

corner, and that's a huge draw for a lot of this crowd. I think that's one thing. The other thing, I think, is actually not technical, is social. There's something authentic that people feel, and they're drawn to. And there's a virtual cycle. And there's a virtual cycle. around that authenticity. And I'm very happy it's sort of unfolding this way. I'll add to that that StarCware and its technology are, we keep saying this all the time. We're not about hype, but we really, you know, it's the real thing. And developers recognize that.

What do I mean it's the real thing? We actually ship the things we say we're going to ship. and they actually work very well from the point of view of developers. And they exist there. They're not just tweets. They're not just test nets that take forever to get to the next stage. These are working things, and developers sense that. At the same time, it's very new,

but I think developers, they also sense that this is a technology that can really, really scale through fractal scaling and layer threes and recursion. and there's a lot of room for expansion, so they want to be part of that. One of the things I'm noticing is that there's starting to be some stratification in the Starkware ecosystem, and I'm not technically minded,

so I'm doing my best to understand how this goes, but there seems to be people who are really interested in the protocol design of Starknet and all of the associated things about that sequencing, like all blockchain, all that kind of stuff. And then there's app developers in Cairo on top of those, and those seem to be the two main. camps of people that have auto-organized. Are there any other camps that I'm missing in the StarCware ecosystem?

And how do you see this playing forward into the future? I think that around layer three, there is sort of a community forming. I think that around the whole programming languages dimension of it, of Cairo 1.0, there is like a sub-community forming. Yeah. The nice thing to see is how these things sort of, they co-alienable. less of their own accord? To the DAP developers,

which are usually small projects and the infrastructure developers, I would add the businesses. So, you know, Visa's use of Starknet for account abstraction is an example of, like, an enterprise as big as it gets, that is looking into this. They're not the only ones. There are a lot of, there are multiple, you know, banks who have sent here, their, you know,

innovation teams to look at what's going on. So that's like a third category that is, you know, inquisitive about this technology. Yeah, there was a conversation yesterday between the blockchain lead for a big credit card company that I will leave unnamed and Terrance of Cartbridge about the work they've been doing around account abstraction. And I told them that Cartridge is closing the gap with the building on Starknet, et cetera, but the gap between blockchain technology

and stuff that our parents can use and that's a big deal. I was talking to the BD guy over at Starkware, Starknet, about the Visa use of Starknet for account abstraction. He was joking about how he didn't, of all the BD that Starkware has done,

Visa chose Starknet of their own accord. What was the conversations like when you guys heard that news from the Starkware team? So maybe this goes to this point around authenticity right, that you can sort of force your way into sort of press releases and literally buy sort of the interaction and then pulling people onto your ecosystem or something can happen in a more sort of authentic and organic fashion.

And when it does, it may take slower, you know, it's lower, it's, it's, it's harder, but when it happens, there's something more sort of stable about it. It's a solid foundation to build on. So the application layer on top of StarkNet is starting to really come alive. And there are some categories that I'm starting to see play out. There's just, of course, the world of account abstraction. But that's just a means to an end for more usage, right? So the gaming ecosystem on StarkNet is starting to become pretty live.

What are some use cases that you guys are saying that perhaps intrinsically interests you? What's your favorite use case on the Starknet ecosystem right now? I would, I don't know if it's going to be the one that is like, you know, the killer app, the crypto kitties, if you will, of Starknet. But it's one I would really like to see pushed more. It's the whole social network and proof of identity and bringing the humans, you know, through reputation, credit scores. You know, I own my data.

Because I think really if the end, so, you know, we started with proof of work, then there's proof of stake. But if you think about it, the really the end point you want is you want like one person, one vote as a, an infrastructure layer of blockchains. And even we need to head in that direction. So it's going to take a while, and we want to do so in a decentralized way, right,

without governments and, you know, KYC things. But anything that has to do with, like, you are the master and owner of your information and your history, and you attest to your credit and worthiness, I would love to see those things. That's my favorite. I share the sentiment.

around things supporting sort of broad-reach, social interaction, and coordination. Meaningful problems that have yet to be solved in the real world, I think I'm eager to see that play out. So if we were to go back to 2013, 2015, when the early Starkware just foundations were set, I kind of would always ask my guest a similar question. If the roadmap for Starkware, Starknet was maximally successful, what would it look like. I kind of imagine this might actually be what would that answer look like back in 2013, 2015, where you have a thousand devs coming all the way to Tel Aviv to take part in these conversations. But let's extend that forward. So we're in 2023 now. What does the maximally

successful roadmap for StarkNet look like if we go into 2028? The problem with me is I lack imagination in a very sort of extreme way. So the only thing I can do is sort of take some recent activity and sort of multiply that. So like the Starknet CC events, which are community organized, there have been two, about 500 participants in each one. In 2028, I suspect there are going to be many of these all over the world. They're going to be sort of like open sourced in the sense that the only dust team and no guardian teams that organize this, I think are going to sort of open it up to other community

members to organize these events. and I expect we're going to see these as sort of coordination and networking events all over the world. And as Eli said on stage this morning, the face-to-face interaction, there's something very, very powerful about it in terms of enhancing interactions. So I expect we're going to see that in a massive way. My hope for 2028 is, okay, like number-wise, I have no doubt that this number of thousand, now in 2028 is 10,000 or more. You can, you know, quote me on that. And like, we'll talk in 2028, hopefully.

So let's see where we are. So number-wise, I have no doubt that this is going to, like, really, really explode, which is good. But at the end of the day, blockchain is a technology that enables social functions, social goods. So I would really love to see Starkness blossoming into this layer

that is dominated not by the developers, but by people who are socially active and socially aware and want to take it a step further for the betterment of society. Right? So like, again, things like voting systems, reaching consensus on stuff that really matters.

human rights or that's what I'd like to see in 2028. Now, maybe 2028 is a bit too soon for that, but I think that's where it really should be heading. Well, of course, everything about crypto is always early. So maybe the conversation starts in 2028, and then in 2038, that's when it actually happens. Probably. So as all ecosystems that sort of grow into themselves,

the original parents of them probably get confused by some of this weird stuff that's going on because that's just what they do. The bird has started to leave the nest and that's definitely what we're seeing here. So what are you two focused on on a day-to-day basis? What's the day in the life of Uri and Ellie? Okay, there's before Uli

we dropped off the map and there's after. So after is very clear to me. I'm just like, you know, how do you say, like, treading, try to keeping my head above the water and like dealing with stuff I used to have a bit more time to properly try to think about certain things and get involved in like the material like thinking about governance or, you know, tokenomics or. So when he comes back, which is going to be soon, I'll do a bit more of that.

But now it's just. Yeah, so I'm on a medical leave of absence. I hope to be back soon. Before that, I was sort of, well, a bunch of things, sort of making sure trains run on time in a broad sense. And doing my best to attract talented people to join Starkware in the ecosystem. And a fair bit of just making sure information flows, meaning someone talks to you and you say, ah, you should talk to X about that. Do you know that they're also working on something like this? And so a fair bit of that just sort of as a router of information in the company and in the ecosystem.

Uri loves this quote, 90% of life is just showing up. So I think that's just, you know, connecting things, pushing something like this sort of very prosaic, non, how do you say it, non like. Not terribly glamorous, yeah, just. Yeah, but like that's 90% of, uh, of, uh, of, uh, what? what goes on in life. And just for the added context, you opened up the Starkware sessions, which you both, of course,

the two founders on stage to talk about, like, oh, there was an unexpected medical emergency that I've had to attend to, which is not to say that the founder has dropped off as, like, no, this is something else. But what was your reaction to the, moments like this trigger reflection and trigger, like, learnings?

And all of a sudden, you're able to look at the Starkware, Starknet ecosystem from a different perspective. What was your learnings in those moments as you had to step away as you were viewing Starknet from more of a distance? The decision to go on a leave of absence was reached within minutes because

frankly, it wasn't only an emotional need, it was a very, very practical need for my family. I'm insanely fortunate in the sense that Starkware is made up of just a

crazy number of talented and capable people and we've succeeded in building a culture where the system, the human system can absorb this kind of shock

in a very trivial fashion and you know, often in startup land you say, you know, what happens if you get hit by a bus? This was, for me,

as close as it ever got to a bus and the organization just operated in the smoothest of fashions and And, you know, looking back sort of 20-some years of entrepreneurship, this is probably the one thing I'm most proud of, that it was put to this stress test,

and it passed in flying colors. And it may sound ironic. Why are you so proud of the fact that, you know, this ship can continue without you, without even blinking? And I don't know, the answer to that is, I don't know why, but it's just I'm bursting with pride. Well, it's very cool. You guys have certainly built a very alive ecosystem,

which is the one key success indicator that we look for in this space. As I watched you two open up this, the conference, I was just struck by how you guys just seem like age-old college roommates. You guys have been, I don't know, working with each other for decades now, and you guys even look like each other at this point. What's that been like having a second half? throughout all this journey. So, yeah, we're, it's a little disturbing the number of people who say that we look alike.

Yeah, we, we've known one another for many, many, many years. It has made a remarkable number of situations. It's turned them from challenging to trivial on the business front, on personal stuff, on every dimension of this story. we've worked very closely over the past five years we've been friends for many years but we haven't worked this closely I guess since the late 80s so

I'll add to that that so first of all well you know now that he's on leave of absence so like you know when we're together first of all we fight and bicker a lot and on like a whole bunch of things professionally

know, ego things on like, you know, matters of style. But I know what I'm saying is also true for Uri. Like, I have the utmost respect for him as, you know, as a professional and as a smart person. And no less important to that. Just like, and I said this from day one, and I'll say it, I'm sure, to the rest of my life. As I am sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, I know that. I know that I can trust him at a very deep level. Like, you know, we fight, we argue. There's a lot of things we disagree about. But like at a very fundamental level, you know, our technology is about integrity.

But in humans, you cannot replace integrity with any kind of math. So you need to have this like relationship of trust and just at a very deep level, he's worthy of trust. Yeah, I can only, it's really funny how, how, in this trustless universe at the end of the day, in order to do what we're doing, it's based on very deep human trust, but there's an abundance of that here.

Well, Ellie, Erie, you guys, I think, exude some of the principles, the deep first principles thinking that really is important in this space. And I'm glad that there's two of you to carry this ecosystem forward. And so thank you for everything you're doing to contribute.

Thank you for coming out. Cheers. Thanks.