The Block: StarkWare partners with Chainlink Labs to expand StarkNet capabilities

Ethereum scaling development firm StarkWare has teamed up with blockchain oracle developer Chainlink Labs to expand app development on its decentralized Layer 2 zk-Rollup network, StarkNet.

The collaboration sees StarkWare join the Chainlink SCALE program — focused on accelerating the growth of blockchain and Layer 2 ecosystems — making Chainlink’s price feeds available on the StarkNet testnet. The partnership was announced in a statement on Monday to coincide with the StarkWare Sessions event in Tel Aviv.

StarkWare's products have generated more than 300 million transactions, settling over $800 billion and minting more than 95 million NFTs. With around 725,000 active users, Chainlink's oracle network is the most widely used in DeFi, enabling over $7 trillion in transaction volume.

StarkNet’s native STRK token, announced in November but not yet tradeable, will cover certain operating costs for Chainlink oracle nodes. This provides developers building on StarkNet a low-cost way to connect their applications to Chainlink’s decentralized network of real-world data feeds, expanding smart contract capabilities.

“We’re excited to be joining the Chainlink SCALE program to provide our ecosystem of developers with access to the industry standard for oracle services, enabling a next-generation of globally scalable web3 applications to be built on StarkNet,” StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson said in the statement. “We look forward to continuing our collaboration and welcome the passionate Chainlink community into the StarkNet ecosystem.”

Scalable dapps Chainlink data fees are now live on the StarkNet testnet and are expected to launch on its mainnet in the near future, something the StarkWare team said will help accelerate the adoption of StarkNet and the growth of its ecosystem.

“We’re thrilled to have StarkNet joining the Chainlink SCALE program, further supporting the upcoming deployment of Chainlink oracle services on StarkNet mainnet,” said co-founder of Chainlink Labs Sergey Nazarov. “By reducing the operating costs of oracle nodes, StarkNet is able to accelerate its ecosystem’s growth and become a more attractive environment for building scalable dapps in the web3 ecosystem.”

Over the weekend, StarkWare open-sourced a crucial component of StarkNet, the StarkNet Prover , increasing the transparency of its code. That move marked the completion of open-sourcing the full StarkNet software stack, having already done so with its Cairo programming language in November and after rolling out the Papyrus open-source client last month.

Chainlink Labs announced SCALE in September, the same day that interbank messaging service SWIFT linked up with the oracle provider on a cross-chain interoperability proof-of-concept project.

Update: Story updated to show the announcement coincided with StarkWare Sessions.

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