- Ethereum scaling platform Starknet has revealed plans to become censorship-resistant through decentralization
- It also wants to use decentralization to increase its robustness
- The move comes a few months after Starkware bowed to pressure over funds lost after a platform upgrade
Ethereum scaling layer Starknet has said that it intends to boost its decentralization to increase its robustness and become censorship-resistant. The platform disclosed that the decentralization efforts will touch on three of its major components, adding that the decentralization efforts will happen simultaneously to achieve the best result. The move comes at a time when law enforcement agencies and lawmakers want to have a certain level of control on blockchain-powered projects, which is against the founding blocks of decentralization.
Centralization Doesn’t Impact Honesty
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Starknet’s Ilia Volokh said that the protocol is deemed centralized due to its dependency on Starware when bundling transactions together to produce blocks and when interacting with the Ethereum main chain.
Although Volokh noted that Starkware’s centralization doesn’t impact the protocol’s honesty when confirming transactions, he said that it can become a nuisance if it decides to filter who can or cannot submit transactions.
According to Volokh, censorship can be intentional or users can also be blocked from the protocol due to an unplanned outage due to the presence of a single point of failure. The core components marked for decentralization include the proving layer, consensus protocol and block production.
Volokh noted that the three components need to be worked upon simultaneously because a weak link in any of them is a hindrance to the platform’s decentralization efforts.
Polygon and Optimism Also Upgrading
The Starknet executive added that tests will be done through testnets before being deployed to the main protocol.
The move comes three months after Starkware bowed to pressure from the crypto community after the platform’s users lost funds due to an upgrade to the protocol. It also comes at a time when layer two platforms like Optimism and Polygon are enhancing their protocols through upgrades and new hires to court more users.
Although Starknet is fixed on improving decentralization, it’s to be seen whether its efforts will bear fruits considering that most layer twos have a degree of centralization.
