Author: Shenchao TechFlow
On October 22, 2026, the official team of Starknet, Ethereum’s leading Layer 2 scaling network, announced a governance poll result with significant strategic implications.
During the 7-day Snapshot off-chain governance voting platform review, the community overwhelmingly supported, with over 93.5% of voting power, initiating a feasibility study to transition from the Ethereum Layer 2 network to an independent quantum-resistant Layer 1 mainnet, with over 2,800 independent active wallets participating in the vote.
In response to this overwhelming public sentiment, Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, announced on social platform X that the core engineering team plans to release a draft whitepaper for a quantum-resistant L1 architecture in November 2026, opening it to public review by developers and the academic community worldwide.
Quantum Resistance Paradox: Why Being on Ethereum L2 Doesn't Guarantee Full Immunity?
The deep-rooted reason Starknet seeks to build its own chain is the irreconcilable systemic gap between its pursuit of ultimate cryptographic security and the existing Ethereum architecture.
According to the technical documentation from the Starknet official portal, the network has been renowned since its inception for its STARK zero-knowledge proof technology. Its underlying mathematical proofs are entirely built on hash-based cryptography, naturally immune to quantum attacks from Shor’s algorithm targeting discrete logarithms and elliptic curves.
With native account abstraction support, end users can autonomously switch to post-quantum signature schemes at the application layer, without requiring underlying protocol hard forks.
A critical security flaw is hidden within Ethereum itself. Since Starknet currently operates as a Rollup, its on-chain verification contract for state validity proofs and final data availability (DA) are deeply dependent on Ethereum's underlying mainnet.
On the eve of quantum computing maturity, as long as Ethereum’s own consensus signature system and execution-layer elliptic curve algorithms have not been fully quantum-resistant across the network, attackers can dismantle Ethereum’s mainnet settlement layer and compromise any layer-2 networks built atop it. This structural destiny—wherein one seeks self-reliance yet remains dependent on another—drives development teams to seek the construction of a fully sovereign底层公链.
Sovereign Architecture and Governance Gateway: The STRK Token Economy Model and Cross-Chain Commitments
In response to lively discussions from various stakeholders in the ecosystem, the StarkWare official team has clarified that this poll is part of an initial technical exploration authorization and does not indicate that the network has officially initiated a fork or independent migration.
Whether it will truly move toward an independent mainnet must still be determined through rigorous engineering analysis and decided by an on-chain, executable final proposal initiated by all STRK holders.
In response to community concerns regarding asset dilution and liquidity fragmentation, the Starknet Foundation has made two key commitments.
First, regardless of whether the final technical direction continues as an Ethereum scaling layer or builds a standalone chain, STRK will remain the sole native network token and gas consumption asset, and no new tokens will ever be issued.
Second, the bidirectional asset bridge between Ethereum and Starknet will remain permanently open; even if it evolves into an independent mainnet, the network will continue to support seamless interoperability and asset flow with the Ethereum ecosystem, preventing significant loss of existing application ecosystems.
Sovereign Awakening: From Ethereum Dependency to Independent Quantum-Resistant Blockchain Competition
This pioneering step by Starknet marks a crucial advancement for leading Rollups in their pursuit of system sovereignty and long-term security barriers.
For a long time, the industry’s dominant consensus has regarded Ethereum as an unshakable global settlement layer. As demands diverge across various Layer 2 networks regarding governance autonomy, protocol revenue distribution, and advancements in cutting-edge cryptography, the debate over whether L2s will ultimately serve as dependencies or sovereign blockchains has reignited.
If Starknet ultimately succeeds in building an independent L1 that combines the high throughput of STARKs with native quantum-resistant consensus, it will not only escape the slow upgrade cycles burdened by legacy systems, but also secure a strategic advantage in the decade-long geopolitical and financial defense competition as quantum technologies move toward practicality.
As the draft of the November technical white paper approaches release, the global cryptography community and the Ethereum community will undergo a public examination of the ultimate architecture for the post-quantum era of blockchain.