Starknet announces entering the fourth phase: introducing privacy breakthroughs and Bitcoin interoperability

ME News report, April 7 (UTC+8): StarkWare announced that Starknet has officially entered its fourth phase, with the goal of enabling a faster, more decentralized, and more private network, while strengthening its connection with Bitcoin. Key highlights of this phase include the STRK20 framework, which supports the ERC20 privacy feature, and the strkBTC asset that can be exchanged for native Bitcoin, providing privacy transaction options. In addition, Starknet v0.15.0 will introduce decentralized block validation, and Staking v3 and v4 will be rolled out gradually to achieve full network decentralization. Furthermore, Starknet is pushing forward Bitcoin’s OP_CAT upgrade to enable trustless settlement, and is exploring more Bitcoin bridge solutions, such as BitVM and ColliderVM, to promote the development of Bitcoin DeFi on Starknet. Meanwhile, the S-two validators will further optimize client proof verification and drive network scaling and privacy protection. Starknet is also committed to achieving comprehensive quantum security, preparing for the post-quantum computing era for both blockchain and Bitcoin. (Source: PANews)