Starstream Has the Potential to Become a Core Component of Cardano's Future

Charles Hoskinson has hinted at the part that Starstream would play in the future of the Layer-1 blockchain.

The founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, has hinted at the role that Starstream could play in the future of the Layer-1 blockchain. While he did not share specifics, the crypto leader took to X to tell his followers that “Starstream has the potential to become a core component of Cardano’s future.”

Recently, Charles Hoskinson joined the Starstream Working Group. This move highlights a broader institutional effort to improve the performance of blockchains through new execution environments. Sebastien Guillemot, the co-founder of crypto ecosystem builder dcSpark and an early supporter of the Starstream initiative, confirmed the participation with a post on X.

In his post, Sebastien also mentioned that the Starstream Working Group has grown "a lot" in the last two weeks. He capped the increase at approximately 50%, which showcases the increasing interest among institutional clients.

Starstream is a new zero-knowledge (ZK) Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) based on UTXO. It is expected to provide simpler and more powerful integrations compared to earlier versions. Sebastien shared a video on X showcasing how the design of this UTXO-based virtual machine aligns with ZK cryptography, widely recognized as a major advancement in privacy-preserving computation.

This way, computations are verified efficiently without needing to reveal the underlying data, which ultimately directly addresses previous limitations. With nearly free transaction batching and simplified use cases, including Oracles, gaming, real-world assets, and stablecoins, the system also contributes to enhancing performance.

Apart from this integration, Cardano has made some other notable advancements. The Cardano Midnight Network sidechain has gained significant traction in the last few months. As a protocol keenly focused on data protection and privacy, this sidechain could serve as a foundational platform for blockchain-based equity issuance, per Charles's projection.

His optimism is fueled by Midnight's privacy, programmability, and interoperability features, which Charles says are critical to bringing traditional stock markets onto blockchain systems.

Cardano's light wallet Lace, also welcomed a new iteration dubbed version 1.22. This technical milestone, which comes with native support for Bitcoin (BTC), was rolled out to users as part of its beta phase. The link with Bitcoin marks the wallet's first major foray into a multi-chain system. Users can send, receive, and manage Bitcoin assets directly from the Lace interface.

This is a notable expansion of the Lace wallet's utility beyond the Cardano ecosystem.

On one hand, Cardano is planning to integrate Hydra with the Lightning Network to create a trustless bridge for Bitcoin Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Charles once shared a three-year timeline that allows large institutions to establish themselves in the Bitcoin DeFi space, facilitated by Cardano's unique infrastructure.

He sees the possibility that a Bitcoin ETF offering DeFi yields could increase shareholders' demand.