The Starknet Foundation has announced that Diego Oliva, who has served as the chief executive officer since March 2023, is stepping down.

The Starknet Foundation, responsible for developing Starknet (STRK), a zero-knowledge powered layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum (ETH), revealed the impending leadership change via an announcement on Aug. 6.

Starknet Foundation’s first CEO to step down

Diego Oliva will step down after leading the Starknet Foundation as its first CEO since March 2023. The outgoing chief executive departs having established a strong team and structure for the Foundation.

“Under Diego’s leadership, the Foundation itself has executed on the Provisions project, and jump-started multiple ecosystem development projects such as DeFi Spring, Seed Grants and the Catalyst and Propulsion programs,” the announcement continued.

James Strudwick will assume the role of executive director and continue Starknet’s growth and adoption. Diego will remain at the Foundation for the next month to help ensure a smooth transition and that platform activities continue uninterrupted. Strudwick has been with the SNF since January 2024, initially as head of ecosystem growth.

Starknet seeing growth

Starknet completed its STRK airdrop earlier this year and recently announced plans to scale Bitcoin using STARK technology. StarkWare noted that success will see Starknet become the first Layer 2 network to achieve simultaneous settlement and scaling for both Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Additionally, Starknet has integrated both Chainlink and Pyth oracles as the ZK rollup network aims to tap into the growing decentralized applications ecosystem.