PANews reported on April 7th that StarkWare announced Starknet has officially entered its fourth phase, aiming to achieve a faster, more decentralized, and more private network while strengthening its connection with Bitcoin. Highlights of this phase include the STRK20 framework supporting ERC20 privacy features and the strkBTC asset, which is exchangeable for native Bitcoin and provides privacy transaction options. Furthermore, Starknet v0.15.0 will introduce decentralized block verification, and Staking v3 and v4 will gradually achieve full decentralization of the network.

Furthermore, Starknet is advancing Bitcoin's OP_CAT upgrade to enable trustless settlement and researching more Bitcoin bridging solutions, such as BitVM and ColliderVM, to drive the development of Bitcoin DeFi on Starknet. Simultaneously, the S-two validator will further optimize client-side proof verification and promote network expansion and privacy protection. Starknet is also committed to achieving full quantum security, preparing for the post-quantum computing era of blockchain and Bitcoin.