Starknet is a general-purpose network that can be used for various actions with smart contracts, such as writing, deploying, and interacting with them. It is a permissionless decentralized validity rollup that was developed by its parent company, StarkWare. It operates as a layer 2 (L2) network on top of Ethereum, which allows all decentralized applications (dApps) to achieve unlimited scale for its computations using the cryptographic proof system STARK. The StarkNet contracts and the StarkNet OS are written in Cairo. This enables developers to deploy and scale use cases regardless of the business logic.

The network and its developer tools are being built by teams from organizations such as Nethermind, Erigon, and Alchemy. Projects that are being built on the network vary from dApps, digital wallets, and services, and there are more than 100 projects on the network.