Blockchain developer StarkWare has announced plans to build a Bitcoin scaling solution in a significant expansion pivot.

StarkWare, which was valued at $8 billion in its last investment round, is the core contributor to Ethereum Layer 2 Starknet. With the new Bitcoin OP_CAT proposal currently being debated in the community, the firm says it's the right time to bring its zero-knowledge scaling technology to Bitcoin.

“Starknet will become the first network to settle simultaneously on Bitcoin and Ethereum, and scale Bitcoin to many thousands of transactions per second. This will happen within six months after the potential Bitcoin upgrade, OP_CAT,” StarkWare CEO and co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson said in a statement shared with The Block.

No extra chain is being created — the plan uses the …