StarkWare’s ‘Starknet Stacks’ Could Add to Growing Field of Blockchain-in-a-Box Offerings

StarkWare, the company behind the Ethereum layer-2 network Starknet, disclosed that it’s working on a set of software tools that will make it easier for developers to spin up their own customized layer-2 chains, paving the way for “appchains” that are optimized for specific applications.

The announcement of “Starknet Stacks” is consistent with a growing trend in Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem, with key projects Polygon, Optimism, zkSync and Arbitrum now allowing developers to essentially clone their own software to spin up their own layer 2s. Potential benefits include the build-out of broader, interoperable blockchain ecosystems.

Under the new plan, described in a blog post published Wednesday from the main company behind the project, StarkWare, developers can build their appchains supposedly benefit from less congestion than on Starknet mainnet. The goal is to provide an easier user experience and more transaction throughput. In addition, the appchains could potentially allow developers to implement features that are not yet available on Starknet’s mainnet.

“The need for appchains, application-specific blockchains that are designed to service the needs of one specific application, has been apparent for several years and is now getting renewed attention,” the StarkWare team said in the blog post.

Starknet recently also went through a major upgrade, known as ‘Quantum Leap,’ which increased the number of transactions per second (TPS) as well as reduced confirmation times. Quantum Leap is also supposed to help make Starknet’s appchains easier to build on.