StarkWare raises $100M in Series D funding round, quadruples valuation to $8B

Ethereum scaling company StarkWare has raised $100 million in Series D funding round at a valuation of $8 billion. The funding round was led by investment firms Greenoaks Capital and Coatue.

Other investors who participated in the round include Tiger Global, Paradigm, Three Arrows Capital, and Sequoia Capital.

Founded in 2017, the startup aims to address scalability issues of the Ethereum blockchain. It employs rollup technology to reduce computational stress and uses a cryptographic method called STARKs, which was developed by Eli Ben-Sasson, along with other computer scientists.

Uri Kolodny Co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, said, "This is a vote of confidence for the tech stack we've built, which makes blockchain scalable for mass use, and cuts transaction fees incurred by users."

StarkWare has two platforms--StarkEx and StarkNet. StarkEx is the scaling engine used by popular nonfungible marketplaces like Sorare, ImmutableX, and dYdX, while StarkNet is a decentralised application (DApp) development network.

Eli Ben-Sasson, Co-founder and President of StarkWare, said, “Anyone who ever built a website can use StarkNet to construct a blockchain app that will be part of the Web3 revolution, pioneering new and exciting uses for blockchain. There’s a huge global community of StarkNet developers, who now have the tools to start a blockchain building boom that will soon make blockchain apps mainstream like smartphone apps. In time, this community won’t just use StarkNet, but will also run the platform,” he added.

Previously, in November 2021, the company had raised $50 million in Series C funding round, which valued the company at $2 billion.