StarkNet is a permissionless decentralized Validity-Rollup. It operates as an L2 network over Ethereum. It enables any dApp to achieve unlimited scale for its computation – without compromising Ethereum’s composability and security.
From the recent update of StarkNet, it has overhauled its in-house Cairo programming language to make Web3 development accessible to developers. In a Medium blog-post by StarkWare, Stark-Based scaling solutions, outlined the upgrades to Cairo 1.0.
According to the blog-post, “Developers can start writing, compiling, and testing Cairo 1.0 programs!” The platform is encouraging developers to start experimenting with Cairo 1.0 and getting accustomed to the new syntax and features.”
What is Cairo 1.0?
Cairo was first introduced in 2020, and following the evolution as its first public version Cairo 1.0 is now available. Also it is a “turing-complete programming language” for efficiently writing STARK-provable programs. “Cairo 1.0 is a Rust-like high-level language. Like Rust, it is intended to allow developers to easily write code that is efficient and safe.”
StarkWare Co-Founder and President, Eli Ben-Sasson, shared the reason for Cairo’s revamping as he said, “The primary drivers were safety and ease of use, and conducting the overhaul presented a terrific opportunity to remove the entry for developers with conventional language backgrounds.”
Cairo 1.0 further introduces Sierra, a new intermediate representation that ensures every Cairo run can be proven. This makes Cairo 1.0 particularly well-suited for use in a permissionless network like StarkNet, where it can provide robust DoS protection and censorship resistance.
Mr. Ben-Sasson explained Sierra as “an important aspect of ensuring a permissionless network.” Additionally the upgrade enables reverted transactions to be included in StarkNet blocks, helping the protocol to avoid adding complex “crypto-economic mechanisms.” He said that Sierra will allow StarkNet to “inherit the full censorship-resistance of Ethereum” and mainly protects against Sequencer denial-of-service attacks.
StarkNet’s blog-post also mentioned that Cairo is the fourth most popular smart contract language by total value locked. It has handled over $790 Billion worth of trades, processed over 300 Million transactions and minted more than 90 Million NFTs, all performed off-chain and settled on Ethereum with the mathematical integrity guaranteed by STARK proofs.
“However, StarkNet does not yet support the deployment and execution of Cairo 1.0 contracts. StarkNet Alpha V0.11.0, planned in the upcoming weeks, will introduce the ability to deploy and run Cairo 1.0 contracts. The upgrade to v0.11.0 will mark the beginning of the Transition Period towards a system that runs only Cairo 1.0 contracts,” according to StarkNet.
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/01/06/starknets-revamping-of-its-cairo-programming-but-why/