StarkWare Calls Starknet L1 Shift Its 'Clearest Path Forward'

StarkWare said on Oct. 10 that “Starknet becoming an independent L1 is our clearest path forward,” strengthening its advocacy for the Ethereum Layer 2 to control its own security upgrades.

The wording goes beyond Starknet’s Oct. 8 statement that it was “actively considering becoming an L1,” which The Defiant previously covered. Yet an article published by Starknet’s official account on Oct. 9 described the idea more cautiously: “It's a question, not a decision, and the conversation is happening in public.”

Starknet still operates as an Ethereum-settled rollup, with about $580 million in total value secured listed by L2BEAT. The Oct. 10 post’s text gives no governance proposal, L1 launch date, bridge-migration design or revised $STRK economics.

StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said on Oct. 8 that independence would let Starknet control security migrations rather than wait for Ethereum or Bitcoin. Starknet’s stated 2027 target is for full quantum resistance; it is not a specified L1 launch date.

What Independence Would Change

Under Starknet’s current protocol design, cryptographic proofs of transaction execution are sent to Ethereum for verification, alongside data that lets the network’s state be reconstructed. An independent Layer 1 would instead rely on its own consensus for settlement security.

That would change a central assumption in StarkWare’s June 30 quantum-readiness roadmap. Its final phase ties bridge messaging and Ethereum blob data availability—the mechanism used to publish Starknet’s state data—to Ethereum’s own cryptographic migration. The roadmap warns that removing the Ethereum-facing bridge functions before that migration would break the bridge.

For users moving assets back to Ethereum, the dependency is concrete. The current StarkGate withdrawal process requires the withdrawal block to be proven and a state update submitted to Ethereum before funds can be released there.

For $STRK holders, fee payment, staking and governance are already token functions, rather than benefits contingent on becoming an L1. StarkWare’s roadmap says all protocol-level changes require approval through Starknet governance, while the token documentation says major operating-system updates require token-holder approval.