Crypto news

25.06.2026
11:50

Co-founder of StarkWare teases a "shocking" DeFi project on Starknet: beta tester search has begun

Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, announced the start of recruiting beta testers for a new DeFi project based on the Starknet network, calling it "shocking." This statement instantly attracted the attention of the crypto community, given the developer's status and reputation.

Who is Eli Ben-Sasson and why does this matter?

Ben-Sasson is not just the CEO of StarkWare, but a respected scientist and professor of cryptography. He is a co-author of the mathematical foundation for ZK-STARK, the technology underlying Starknet and revolutionizing blockchain scaling. His contribution to the creation of Zcash — the first major private cryptocurrency based on zero-knowledge proofs — also speaks for itself. As the community rightly noted, it took the rest of the industry about five years to "catch up" with his ideas. Therefore, his personal involvement in a new project is a powerful signal.

What is known about the new project?

At the moment — practically nothing, except for the intriguing epithet "shocking." Ben-Sasson is accepting testing applications only via direct messages, without revealing either the functionality or the name of the service. After a wave of responses, he redirected the flow of interested parties to a user with the handle 0xVegabond, which only fueled interest further. The announcement itself was made with the standard disclaimer: this is not an investment recommendation, and everyone should conduct their own research.

Analytical commentary from Cryptalist

The very fact that Eli Ben-Sasson, the man who essentially developed the mathematics for ZK-rollups, is personally handling the search for testers, rather than a marketing department, is an exceptional event. Given his past achievements, the announced project on Starknet automatically becomes one of the most anticipated in the DeFi segment. The community has already shown tremendous interest, confirming the high level of trust in Ben-Sasson's figure. For now, we can only speculate about what exactly lies behind the "shocking" definition, but one thing is clear: it could be something capable of changing the rules of the game in decentralized finance.