Interview with Elias Tazartes, Co-founder and Co-CEO/CTO of Kakarot Summary

Kakarot is an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) project implemented on Starknet that aims to promote adoption of the network by allowing developers to use the Solidity programming language on Starknet. Kakarot's main goals are:

Expand the Starknet ecosystem: Attract more users and developers by allowing EVM users, wallet owners, and decentralized applications (dApps) to interact with Starknet natively.

Provide choice: Developers can choose to build applications using Solidity (for network effects) or Cairo (for higher performance).

Increase liquidity: Increase on-chain liquidity by supporting more EVM bridges and infrastructure deployments to Starknet.

Dual VM support: Kakarot makes Starknet the first dual VM ZK-rollup supporting both EVM and Cairo VM.

Kakarot's value proposition:

For Starknet developers: Provides the choice to use EVM programming languages ​​and tools, expanding their options. For users: Provides faster and cheaper transactions, and better interoperability with the broader Ethereum ecosystem.

Future plans:

Planned to be launched on the Starknet mainnet at the end of 2024. Continue to work with major infrastructure players to create the highest performance zkEVM application chain stack. Prepare for future development: Use Kakarot as a proof backend to be able to prove arbitrary EVM execution.

Long-term vision:

Promote the growth of the Starknet ecosystem through EVM compatibility, especially in the EVM DeFi field. Provide proof capabilities for various EVM chains (such as Ethereum L1, OP-stack chain, Orbit chain, etc.), and promote the migration of all rollups to ZK proofs.

Elias emphasized that Kakarot is working to improve developer and user experience, including solving the problem of Cairo and EVM integration, and how to avoid liquidity fragmentation between Cairo protocol and EVM protocol in the Starknet ecosystem. They are also exploring how to most effectively use Cairo as a provable infrastructure programming language.

Overall, the Kakarot project aims to promote the development and adoption of the Starknet ecosystem by providing EVM compatibility, while maintaining Starknet's high performance and scalability, and providing more choices and opportunities for developers and users.