Description
In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, we sit down with Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare. Ben Sasson details StarkWare's latest bet on Bitcoin: Adding BTC staking and lending/borrowing to the Ethereum Layer 2 (coupled with 100M in STRK incentives) in its bid to become Bitcoin's execution layer. StarkWare is focusing on BTC while much of competitors' attention has gone to lure large fintech and TradFi names onchain. Ben Sasson says he couldn't care less because "corporate chain and decentralized chain is a contradiction."
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction to Eli Ben-Sasson & StarkWare
00:24 – StarkNet’s mission: Scaling blockchain with ZK proofs
01:30 – StarkWare’s achievements: $8B valuation & global impact
03:22 – BTC Phi: Bitcoin staking & $100M incentive program
07:05 – How Bitcoin staking works on StarkNet
17:11 – StarkNet as Bitcoin’s execution layer: The vision
27:21 – Verifying Bitcoin headers in milliseconds: A breakthrough
41:02 – StarkNet’s role in the "integrity web"
49:51 – Why corporate chains won’t work in crypto
51:53 – Closing thoughts: Decentralization, scale, and the future
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