Ecosytem Skarknet
Jérémy Martin
November 15, 2023
Web3
In the ever-expanding universe of blockchain technology, Starknet, a revolutionary platform built on the powerful Ethereum blockchain, promises endless possibilities in terms of speed, scalability, and security. We invite you to delve into the fascinating world of Starknet and explore three flagship projects that push the boundaries of innovation.
As the digital world evolves at a rapid pace, these pioneering projects on Starknet stand out for their ingenuity, ambition, and potential impact on how we interact with technology. From decentralized finance to digital art and online gaming, these groundbreaking initiatives are redefining standards, paving the way for a new and exciting era of blockchain exploration.
Starksheet, a dApp deployed on Starknet, is more than just an ordinary spreadsheet application. It aims to provide an intermediate entry point for all things blockchain, allowing users to read values, perform single or multiple transactions, and store data.
Starksheet functions like a dashboard where users can conduct massive combined calculations or simply input constant values into neighboring cells.
Its major appeal lies in the fact that each sheet represents an NFT collection, consisting of cells, each representing a token. Minting a cell is equivalent to minting an NFT.
With dynamic calculations, it becomes incredibly easy to create dynamic NFT collections. Users can create a sheet (representing a collection from Starknet's standards perspective) and configure it, either with a script interacting with the contract or manually through the web interface or explorer.
It is entirely possible to define links (URIs) for metadata as well as media associated with each token. What sets this project apart from other no-code collection creation projects is its ability to allow users to easily add data that evolves dynamically based on internal or external values within the collection. This means you can age your NFT characters or increase the rarity of a token that remains in the same hands for a certain period, thereby enhancing liquidity and the volume generated by your collection.
Cartridge is a project related to the creation of blockchain-powered video games, also known as web3 games.
In a classic online collectible card game, players are dependent on the publisher for trading, ownership, creation/destruction, and thus the monetary value of their cards. If this game were built using blockchain infrastructure, each card could be a limited edition NFT, reusable in other games or resold to buy others.
Another tangible advantage of decentralized online games is the impossibility of cheating or manipulating game mechanics. Since the blockchain inherently provides a secure storage and execution space, the game itself becomes resilient.
Unfortunately, using a blockchain like Ethereum currently proves challenging because each interaction generates state changes that must be calculated and recorded on the blockchain. This naturally leads to high fees and significant latency on the network.
Starknet emerges as a solution, enabling decentralized games to verify calculations on their infrastructures or the Ethereum blockchain, performing more operations on its storage at extremely low costs.
Starknet significantly expands the limits of what can be stored on Ethereum within the context of a video game and especially the calculations performed by these games on the blockchain.
Cartridge comprises two main products:
By analogy, Cartridge is to the web3 world what Unity is to the web2 world. It provides game designers with tools to focus on their game's specifics rather than managing infrastructure complicated by blockchain.
Dojo offers a suite of open-source tools for building video game projects and metaverses on the Starknet blockchain. Current web3 games often suffer from limited gameplay due to each action being calculated on the blockchain, which acts as a bottleneck in terms of the number of operations that can be effectively applied per second.
By using Dojo, developers have access to tools that aim to standardize and accelerate the development of decentralized games, encouraging the gaming industry to embrace such projects and democratize web3 gaming.
Dojo notably provides a standardized entity management system, where an entity is a unique object represented by an identifier. Until now, there was no standard for their design, forcing developers to rethink their implementation for each new game from scratch. Standardizing entities will not only simplify and accelerate development but also bring immense interoperability, allowing anyone to create their own extensions and mods much more easily, both between and within games.
Dojo thus opens the door to a vast creative space concerning decentralized video games. Additional modules, such as a migration tool, indexer, and a Starknet node tailored for local development with Dojo, complement the suite.
While Cartridge is still in development, it has already been used to build a variety of proof-of-concept games, including Dope Wars (a metaverse project akin to Habbo Hotel), Influence (a space simulation game), and Realms (a medieval fantasy strategy game). It has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry by enabling developers to create fair, scalable, interoperable games, all while enhancing the user experience.
Cartridge Controller, a web module, integrates with existing wallets (such as Argent X and Braavos for Starknet) to maintain game sessions without requiring constant wallet signing. The design of Cartridge Controller allows developers to define a set of rules regarding the type of signature-less interactions that players can accept. This standardized system is already used in the traditional world when installing a mobile application or when a web page requests specific access, such as a computer's camera and microphone. These enhancements could usher in the next generation of web3 gamers.
The Cartridge project holds as much promise as blockchain gaming itself, revolutionizing how users interact and opening exciting new prospects for the gaming industry.
In the frantic DeFi ecosystem of StarkNet, an innovative project emerges from the depths of innovation: Morphine. Recent months have witnessed exponential growth in liquidity deposited on StarkNet, a phenomenon explained by the rise of DeFi projects being built on this promising platform.
Morphine stands out as an innovative lending and borrowing protocol in development. This bold project operates in the permissionless domain, offering undercollateralized loans, thus opening the doors of DeFi to low-risk lending opportunities with attractive annual interest rates. But Morphine doesn't stop there.
With revolutionary features such as leverage on its farming, Morphine enables users to borrow more than they deposit while dynamically adjusting interest rates through a calculation engine based on the Black-Scholes formula. This liquidity can then be strategically used on other protocols, generating a positive yield for the borrower.
However, this system is not without risks. The borrower's position's volatility is multiplied by the leverage amount, and poor management can lead to position liquidation if the ratio between borrowed liquidity value and used liquidity becomes too high. It is imperative to wisely choose the pools to interact with.
What sets Morphine apart is its clever use of the account abstraction feature. By providing users with a smart wallet containing borrowed funds, Morphine ensures maximum security by preventing any fraudulent operations. Users can automate their interactions, customize their DeFi portfolio, and eliminate the need for tedious manual interventions.
It is important to note that Morphine is still under development, and although its efficiency is already remarkable, the contracts have not yet been audited. Therefore, it is crucial to consider these risks and conduct thorough research before interacting with this protocol.
Morphine is just one example among the many booming DeFi projects on StarkNet. These promising developments foreshadow an exciting future for decentralized finance, where innovation and security converge to shape a financial landscape that is more accessible, transparent, and efficient than ever before.
The emergence of blockchain technology has opened the door to a new universe of possibilities, and Starknet stands as a revolutionary platform. Through flagship projects like Starksheet, Cartridge, and Morphine, Starknet pushes the boundaries of innovation in key areas such as NFT collection creation, decentralized video games, and DeFi protocols. These projects, while still in development, represent the exciting future of blockchain technology. They demonstrate the convergence of innovation and security, creating a decentralized, transparent, and efficient financial landscape. As these initiatives continue to evolve, they promise to reshape how we interact with technology, paving the way for a new era.
