Deep Dive
1. EY Nightfall Institutional Privacy Integration (February 2026)
Overview: StarkWare announced the integration of EY's Nightfall, a zero-knowledge (ZK) privacy protocol, into Starknet on February 17, 2026 (Cointelegraph). This technology allows institutions to conduct confidential B2B payments, treasury management, and DeFi activities on Starknet's public layer-2 infrastructure. Transactions are private by default but support selective disclosure for audits and compliance, addressing a key barrier for regulated entities.
What this means: This is bullish for STRK because it directly targets institutional capital, potentially increasing network usage and demand for STRK for transaction fees. However, it is neutral in the short term as adoption depends on overcoming Starknet's past reliability challenges, which have included several mainnet outages in 2025.
Overview: With the v0.14.0 upgrade marking the completion of the previous technical roadmap, the Starknet team is now soliciting community input to define the next phase of development (Starknet). This process, initiated in July 2025, aims to shift Starknet's focus from being a generic "cheap Ethereum" scaling solution to a specialized platform with unique capabilities, aligning with broader industry debates about Layer-2 evolution.
What this means: This is neutral for STRK as the outcome is uncertain. A successful, well-defined roadmap could reignite developer interest and clarify Starknet's competitive edge. The bearish risk is that prolonged uncertainty or a lack of compelling differentiation could see the project lose momentum to other specialized chains.
Conclusion
Starknet is pivoting from a pure scaling narrative to specializing in institutional privacy and defining its next unique value proposition. Will the focus on regulated finance and community-driven planning be enough to distinguish it in a crowded Layer-2 landscape?