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A blockchain is a shared database maintained by thousands of computers worldwide. Once data is written to a blockchain, it cannot be altered or deleted — every entry is permanent and publicly visible. No single company, government, or person controls it.

This makes blockchains ideal for recording ownership. If your name is on the blockchain as the owner of an asset, that record stands without requiring you to trust a platform, registry, or intermediary to maintain it.

Web3 is the name for the emerging internet built on public blockchains. In Web2 (the current internet), your data is owned by platforms — Instagram, YouTube, Spotify. In Web3, your assets and identity are stored on-chain and you carry them with you across applications.

A wallet address on a blockchain is like an email address — but instead of a company controlling the account, you control it through a cryptographic key pair. Medialane uses ChipiPay to derive this wallet from your existing email login, so you get Web3 ownership without the complexity of managing keys yourself.

Starknet is a Layer 2 (L2) network built on top of Ethereum. Ethereum is the most secure public blockchain in the world, but it can be slow and expensive to use directly. Starknet processes transactions off-chain in batches and submits a single cryptographic proof to Ethereum — inheriting its security at a fraction of the cost.

Starknet is where Medialane's smart contracts live. When you mint an NFT, list an asset, or accept an offer, those transactions happen on Starknet and are settled with finality on Ethereum.

A zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) is a cryptographic technique that lets one party prove to another that something is true without revealing the underlying information. Starknet uses STARK proofs — a specific type of ZKP — to prove that all transactions in a batch are valid without re-executing every one on Ethereum.

For users, this means: lower fees, faster finality, and the same level of security as Ethereum mainnet. For developers, it means a programmable environment that can scale to millions of transactions per day.

Smart contracts are programs that run on the blockchain. They execute automatically when certain conditions are met — no intermediary required. The Medialane marketplace contract enforces royalties, validates signatures, and executes asset transfers entirely through code, not through a human decision.

Starknet smart contracts are written in Cairo, a programming language designed specifically for generating STARK proofs. Medialane's contracts are open source and auditable by anyone.

Starknet natively supports account abstraction — a model where wallets are smart contracts themselves, not just key pairs. This enables features like session keys (SNIP-9), which allow applications to sign a limited set of transactions on your behalf for a defined period.

Medialane uses session keys to let you approve a session once with your PIN and then execute multiple marketplace actions — minting, listing, buying — without re-entering your credentials each time. Sessions expire automatically for security.