Enter the Starknet Ecosystem: A First Look at Innovative Projects

A living, breathing document covering a few of the many innovative projects in the Starknet ecosystem.

Tl;dr

Starknet ecosystem leverages STARK validity rollups to improve layer-two performance, confidentiality, and scalability. Over 221 projects are building on Starknet, including OnlyDust, Briq, Pxls, Realms, Influence, and Cartridge. The community is working on deep architectural advancements, which will have groundbreaking impacts on decentralization, scalability, and user experience.

Intro

While Ethereum’s scaling and clunky UX have drawn frequent criticism, the Starknet community has diligently worked to tackle these issues. In the last two years, Starknet has leveraged the power of STARK validity rollups to push the boundaries of layer-two performance, confidentiality, and scalability.

But there’s still a lot of work to be done. Starknet is still in alpha and is not yet optimized for speed, although upcoming technology improvements will fix this. Nonetheless, with over 221 projects building on Starknet, this progress is a promising sign for the acceptance and growth of both Starknet and general STARK adoption.

Discover more about the rapidly growing Starknet ecosystem through the community-driven and entirely open-source website, Starknet Ecosystem. It serves as a concentrated hub for exploring projects, job opportunities, metrics, and educational resources related to Starknet. The website offers an extensive directory of ecosystem projects, a job board, and a metrics section to track performance. Furthermore, it provides educational resources, including Twitter thread posts and an Academy section, to keep community members up-to-date with the latest trends and developments. Regardless of experience level, the website is an all-in-one resource for anyone interested in learning or contributing to the Starknet ecosystem.

In this guide, we’ll cover a handful of groundbreaking projects built on top of Starknet targeting three main personas:

• Devs
• Artists
• Gamers

The purpose of this guide is not to constitute investment advice, but to shine a light on a few of the amazing applications being built within the Starknet ecosystem.

Devs

Given Starknet’s nascency, our community is constantly seeking new contributors to pioneer the future of the network. Since launching the native programming language, Cairo, as a low-level assembly language in 2020, it’s since evolved into a Python and Rust-inspired syntax optimized for L2 smart contracts. With the open-sourcing of Cairo 1.0 and the launch of Warp, the Solidity to Cairo code transpiler, we have already seen an exponential rise of developer activity, and we expect this trend to continue.

OnlyDust

OnlyDust is a platform that connects devs and builders to open-source projects within the Starknet ecosystem. Targeted to devs looking to make an impact, OnlyDust empowers Cairo devs to lend a hand on meaningful projects like Kakarot, DevNet, and starknet.js, and get paid each week based on their contributed value. Thanks to Warp, Solidity devs can get in on the action too.

While the platform has already onboarded hundreds of contributors, it soon plans to launch a “Leader” role, where individuals can start a project of their own and seek help directly from the community.

In addition to its online community, OnlyDust hosts in-person events where devs can collaborate and immerse themselves in the rapidly growing Starknet community.

Artists

Despite the cyclical hype of NFTs, the digital art market is booming. The Starknet ecosystem is filled with projects built to uplift artists, helping them grow and earn from sharing their artwork with the world.

Briq

Like digital legos, Briq has built a crafting and composability system for artists to construct digital works using ERC-1155 token construction blocks called briqs. Users can assemble briqs to create new NFTs called sets. From there, artists can sell, lend, transfer their creations or disassemble their sets to create something entirely new.

Built for interoperability, briqs are designed to be taken across virtual worlds, serving as the building blocks of the metaverse.

Pxls

Pxls is an on-chain collaborative commissioned art experiment, built around a collection of 400 ‘pxl’ NFTs. Each pxl acts as a key to participate in the creation of collaborative pixel artworks (”rtwrks”). Every two days, an auction for a new rtwrk runs for 24 hours.

Along with each bid, the user shares a theme to be incorporated into the next rtwrk (in the event they win the auction). When an auction ends, the drawing starts. Each pxl NFT holder is briefed with the theme and can colorize up to 20 of the 2,000 total pixels per artwork.

After 24 hours, the drawing is fixed forever on the blockchain. Bidders can then mint their rtwrk NFT and it will appear in the Pxls Rtwrks ERC-721 collection.

All winning auction bids are distributed in the following manner:

• 90% are distributed to the drawers.
• 10% are distributed to the Pxls treasury and as compensation to founders (fndrs.)

Gaming

The blockchain gaming industry was once hindered by Ethereum’s scalability limitations, but the introduction of Starknet has proven to be transformative. As more onchain gaming teams realize the limitations of EVM/Solidity, they are encouraged to explore other virtual machines. Fortunately, with the advent of Cairo 1.0 and Rust, developers can easily build seamless onchain games.

Starknet’s negligible gas fees make it possible to create immersive metaverses with rich data while establishing sustainable in-game economies.

Realms

A product of BibliothecaDAO, Realms is an eternal massive-multiplayer online game (MMO) where players can raise empires, raid resources, and control relics. The game is open-source, and unlike many crypto games, lives entirely on-chain on Starknet.

The game has 22 resources of varying rarity that can be generated by purchasing Labor. Each resource generation cycle takes 2 hours and yields 25x of the resource. Resources can be used to construct buildings, summon battalions, and trade on the AMM. Each Realm has a raidable vault.

Battalions create armies that can defend or attack other Realms for resources. A Realm can have one defending army and multiple attacking armies, but it’s important to balance their consumption with available resources and consider the risk and benefit of each raid.

There are 50 unique Wonders in the Realmverse that generate daily bonuses of every Resource based on their rarity, but specific figures are not yet released.

Featuring various game modes and functionalities such as staking and crafting, Realms is governed by a set of pre-defined rules which can be updated based on on-chain player voting.

The game had an Alpha and Beta release in Q1 2023, followed by a production deployment if the DAO agrees it’s ready. Q2 will bring an NFT Marketplace, Crypts & Caverns, Crafting, the first expansion — Adventurers, and ecosystem expansion with new modules.

Influence

Influence is a highly anticipated 3D space strategy sandbox MMO set in the asteroid belt of the Adalia system. The game features third-person gameplay, allowing players to control ships and installations, colonize asteroids, engage in combat, develop architecture, create communities, and expand their influence in the universe. All in-game assets are player-owned, including the 250,000 asteroids of Adalia, each with a unique composition of resources to be mined and refined into various products, which can be traded on the open market.

The game employs realistic orbital mechanics and Player Owned Game Assets, allowing players to truly own their assets. Influence will launch in 2023.

Influence is a free-to-play game, and there is no recurring fee to play. However, performing certain actions will cost network transaction fees. The game is not PAY-to-win, and every in-game item can be purchased using SWAY. All assets in the game, including asteroids, crewmates, ships, and in-game items, are Player Owned Game Assets (POGAs) owned by the players themselves.

The game is packed with combat, strategy, and collaboration, making it perfect for gamers, sci-fi lovers, and technologists alike.

Cartridge

To create a successful crypto game, it’s essential to have crypto tools that provide a seamless user experience similar to that of Web 2.0. WebAuthn is a widely accepted industry standard specification that enables players to securely generate and manage keypairs for authentication across various devices. With the adoption of Passkeys by Apple and Google, it’s now easier than ever to manage and recover credentials.

WebAuthn offers several configuration options with different usability and security tradeoffs. In the most usable configuration, users can generate and manage their keypairs securely through platform authentications like Face ID or fingerprint. Many platforms feature secure elements that can be utilized via the WebAuthn API. Passkeys further enhance the user experience by synchronizing credentials across devices and enabling recovery via the root platform account.

In the most secure configuration, specialized hardware like FIDO2 compliant devices such as Yubikeys or Ledgers can generate credentials and assertions through roaming authentications.

The adoption of WebAuthn by major software and hardware providers is driving a massive shift in authentication logic. By supporting WebAuthn credentials, platforms like Starknet can provide a significant improvement in blockchain usability and pave the way for mainstream adoption.

That’s where Cartridge comes in — it’s like a crypto version of Steam that helps players discover and play games while managing their on-chain assets, tokens, and reputation. With Cartridge, builders can create successful crypto games that offer an enhanced user experience and capitalize on the momentum of the crypto gaming industry.

Dive into the Future with Starknet

As you can see, the advent of Starknet has already unlocked countless opportunities for our community of devs, artists, marketers, and gamers. But this is only the start. The community is currently working on deep architectural advancements which will have groundbreaking impacts on decentralization, scalability, user experience and more. And we have no doubt that these upgrades will unleash a flood of new and exciting projects into the ecosystem.

There’s never been a better time to hop in.