StarkWare Unveils New 'Stwo' Cryptographic Prover That's 'Blazingly Fast'

DENVER, COLORADO – StarkWare, the developer firm behind layer-2 network Starknet, announced on Thursday at ETHDenver that it is building a new cryptographic prover, called Stwo.

A prover is a key component for layer-2s, since they generate proofs that are then posted to the base layer blockchain – a crucial process in linking the networks and sharing the security. With a faster prover, processing transactions costs should be lower, which in effect then will also lower fees for users and speed up transactions, according to the StarkWare team.

In August, StarkWare open-sourced its existing prover, known as Stone. The new prover, "Stwo," gets its name from a portmanteau of Stone and Two, and anyone will be able to run it as well as examine its codebase, according to a press release seen by CoinDesk.

Starknet appchains that currently use Stone will eventually reap the benefits of the Stwo prover, according to StarkWare.

The news comes just a week after StarkWare and Polygon announced Circle STARKS, which are a new type of cryptographic proofs designed to make transactions faster and cheaper for zero-knowledge rollups.

Oren Katz, COO of StarkWare, said in a press release that Circle STARKS will be implemented in Stwo, helping to "supercharge Ethereum by more efficiently generating proofs."

“It’s especially exciting that just a week after the new Circle STARK protocol was announced as a theoretical breakthrough, this protocol is already springing to life with the development of this blazingly fast prover,” Katz said.