Starknet was developed by StarkWare Industries, a company founded in 2018 by Eli Ben-Sasson and Uri Kolodny. StarkWare introduced STARK proofs as a way to enhance blockchain scalability and privacy through zero-knowledge cryptography. The Starknet mainnet launched in November 2021, providing a permissionless Layer 2 solution for Ethereum. The STRK token was introduced to facilitate governance, transaction fees, and staking within the network. Starknet has since gained attention as one of the leading Layer 2 scaling solutions, with a growing ecosystem of dApps and DeFi platforms leveraging its technology.