StarkWare Launches Nonprofit Foundation to Fuel StarkNet Ecosystem

StarkWare, creator of blockchain scalability solution StarkNet, confirmed plans for a long-rumored token in July and the launch of an independent, non-profit foundation to promote the ecosystem’s growth. The StarkNet Foundation made its official debut on Wednesday with a token allocation and a seven-person board.

The StarkNet Foundation aims to help the network reach its decentralization goal through the development of governance mechanisms and the institution of decentralization technology called sequencing and proving, according to a draft blog post provided to CoinDesk.

StarkNet is a layer 2 zero-knowledge (zk) rollup that seek to address Ethereum’s dual scalability issues of slow transaction speeds and high transaction fees, while maintaining the security and decentralization of the main blockchain. Parent StarkWare reached an $8 billion valuation during a $100 million funding round in May.

Read more: What Are Rollups? ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups Explained

The StarkNet Foundation will launch with 5.01 billion StarkNet Tokens, which amounts to 50.1% of the initial token supply of 10 billion tokens. The funds will go toward the maintenance and security of StarkNet as a public good, continued development and expansion of the network, and developer support.

The foundation’s board includes StarkWare co-founders Uri Kolodny (CEO) and Eli Ben-Sasson (president), and Shubhangi Saraf, a mathematician and computer scientist who serves as a StarkWare adviser. Other board members include lawyer and OSS Capital partner Heather Meeker, Ethereum core developer and startup founder Tomasz Stańczak, former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin, and Eric Wall, a prominent crypto personality and investor.

«For the same reasons I’ve gone to considerable lengths to galvanize the Ethereum community to do whatever it takes to preserve neutrality at the base layer, I intend to do so at the layers above as well,” Wall told CoinDesk in a message. “That’s really what this board role means to me – a chance to affect a potentially material player in the layer 2 ecosystem from its early stages and help it grow.”

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