'100x Lower Than L1 Fees' — Alchemy Integrates Ethereum L2 Product Starknet to Increase Web3 Scalability

According to the startup Starkware, the team’s Ethereum layer two (L2) service Starknet has been integrated by the blockchain API and node service Alchemy. Developers can now leverage Alchemy’s infrastructure tools alongside Starknet’s zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup technology.

Israel-Based Startup Starkware Partners With Alchemy

On Monday, the blockchain startup Starkware announced the team has inked a strategic partnership with Alchemy. The partnership will allow Alchemy customers to build decentralized finance (defi) and Web3 applications using Starknet, Starkware’s Ethereum layer two (L2) service.

Essentially, Alchemy is a blockchain infrastructure firm that provides node services and blockchain APIs to clients. For instance, Alchemy’s Supernode provides API call data for networks like Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Flow.

Starkware revealed the Alchemy collaboration on Twitter and further remarked that Alchemy’s suite of products will “make it easier and more accessible for the growing number of developers to build on Starknet.”

The L2 product Starknet’s rollups use ZK-based computations that utilize validity proofs and the project claims Starknet gas fees are “100x lower” than layer one (L1) Ethereum fees. The defi perpetuals and derivatives protocol Dydx leverages ZK-based rollup tech that is similar to Starknet’s underlying framework.

“We’re excited about supporting Starknet because we believe that Starknet’s utilization of validity and ZK-rollups offer solutions to core Web3 problems,” Alchemy said in a statement published on Monday. “These solutions increase scalability by bundling transactions together off-chain, and then verifying them on-chain with just a fraction of the costs.” Alchemy continued:

But in contrast to other Layer 2 scaling solutions, such as optimistic rollups that can take longer to confirm transactions, validity rollups use what are called validity proofs to instantly prove if transactions are valid or not.

Starkware Valued at $2 Billion

The Alchemy integration follows Starkware revealing at the end of February that Starknet Alpha was deployed on mainnet. In November, Starkware raised $50 million in a Series C led by Sequoia Capital, and $173 million in overall capital injections propped the Israel-based startup’s valuation to $2 billion. The co-inventor of Starknet and co-founder and president of Starkware, Eli Ben-Sasson, believes the partnership will be a game-changer.

“It means that with Alchemy’s infrastructure, the developer community now can more easily access Starknet, the most cutting edge permissionless scaling platform, harnessing the power of validity proofs,” the Starkware executive remarked in the partnership announcement.