According to Blockworks, Bitcoin currently lacks a true layer-2 network because existing scaling solutions do not inherit Bitcoin's security model. Liquid Network and Rootstock (RSK) are sidechains that run independently of Bitcoin and use their own validators or miners.

StarkWare announced Wednesday that it has successfully verified the first zero-knowledge proof on the Bitcoin testnet Signet, a major milestone for its new STARK validator, which StarkWare developed in partnership with Weikeng Chen of L2 Iterative.

The validator demonstrates the potential of zk-based layer-2 solutions without the need to use fraud proofs or liveness proofs. The validator code has been released via Github.

The new validator uses Circle STARKs cryptographic proofs, which greatly speeds up the proving process and will be used in StarkWare’s next-generation STARK prover, Stwo.