STARK is a succinct proof protocol that is scalable and transparent. Transparent (the T in STARK) means it requires no trusted setup (unlike other proof systems). Scalable (the S in STARK) means the prover time scales quasi-linearly with respect to a native computation, while verifier time scales logarithmically.

This inherent asymmetry makes STARK an ideal instrument for scaling computations on blockchains. It allows a batch of transactions to be computed off-chain and verified on-chain in an exponentially smaller time, without adding any trust assumptions. Batch size can grow with only a small increase in cost, allowing scaling up to thousands, and eventually tens of thousands of trades per second.