Cardano’s development is getting a boost with the acceleration of Starstream, a zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM).
Speeding Up Development
Sebastien Guillemot, a key developer, announced that the team is expanding to three full-time developers, plus himself, to speed up Starstream’s development. This shows a significant commitment to getting Starstream onto the Cardano mainnet faster than initially anticipated. While no official launch date has been set, this news is exciting, especially considering Charles Hoskinson’s recent endorsement of Starstream as crucial to Cardano’s future.
Why Starstream is a Big Deal
Starstream directly addresses a major criticism of Cardano: the challenges of building privacy-focused apps that need to maintain state. Cardano’s current system makes this difficult. Starstream solves this by using a different approach entirely, creating a zkVM that runs off-chain but verifies its actions on-chain.
This is done using coroutines, a programming technique that lets a program pause, save its state, and resume later. This creates secure checkpoints, making complex, multi-step processes like auctions and games much easier to build on Cardano without the usual complications.
Easy Integration
Another great thing about Starstream is that it’s designed to be added to Cardano without a major network update (hard fork). This means its launch depends mainly on finishing audits, getting peer reviews, and building the necessary tools. This makes for a much smoother and faster integration process.
