Starknet Upgrade Slashes Transaction Times
The Starknet mainnet's "Quantum Leap" upgrade is live, significantly improving the network's performance. The launch has reportedly slashed transaction times to "low single-digit" seconds. The upgrade for the ZK-rollup also set new records for transactions per second (TPS), demonstrating rapid progress in Layer-2 scaling technology.
The "Quantum Leap" upgrade (v0.12.0) fundamentally re-architected Starknet's transaction processor, the sequencer, by rewriting it from Python into the more efficient Rust programming language. This change addressed a core performance bottleneck that had previously limited the network's speed to as low as 2 transactions per second (TPS). During testing, the new Rust-based sequencer demonstrated a consistent throughput of 37 TPS, with peaks reaching 90 TPS. This represents a significant jump from the network's previous speed of around 10 TPS. Uri Kolodny, CEO of StarkWare, the company developing Starknet, noted the results exceeded their initial expectations for the test. Beyond raw throughput, the upgrade also slashed transaction latency, with the time-to-inclusion—the time it takes for a transaction to be confirmed—dropping to under 10 seconds in normal conditions. This was part of a focused effort to improve user experience by making interactions on the network feel more responsive. This upgrade is a stepping stone in a broader performance roadmap. Future updates aim to introduce parallel execution in Q2 2024, allowing the network to process multiple transactions simultaneously instead of sequentially. Further down the line, version 0.13.3 is slated to integrate "Cairo-native" into the sequencer. This will allow for direct execution on hardware, bypassing the Cairo Virtual Machine for another major boost in speed and efficiency. The roadmap also includes plans for a fee market and further cost reductions by leveraging Ethereum's EIP-4844 data "blobs".
