StarkNet's STRK Token Launch Mired in Controversy

The initial airdrop on February 20, 2024, distributed over 700 million STRK tokens to nearly 1.3 million eligible addresses, including early users and Ethereum stakers. Within the first 90 minutes, 45 million tokens were claimed, and the price briefly surged to over $3, giving StarkNet a fully diluted valuation of around $30 billion. A primary source of community anger was the token vesting schedule for early investors and contributors. The original plan involved unlocking a massive 1.34 billion STRK tokens—13.4% of the total supply—on April 15, 2024, just two months after the public launch, sparking fears of a massive sell-off. Airdrop eligibility criteria also drew sharp criticism. A requirement for wallets to hold at least 0.005 ETH at the time of a November 2023 snapshot excluded many active network participants. Simultaneously, concerns were raised about sophisticated airdrop hunters successfully exploiting the criteria, with one bragging that 179 of their 213 wallets received tokens. In response to the backlash, developer firm StarkWare significantly altered the unlock schedule. Instead of 1.34 billion tokens, only 64 million (0.64%) were unlocked in April, with the remainder to be released gradually each month until March 2027, a move praised for better aligning StarkWare's long-term incentives with the community. Despite the course correction, Starknet saw a significant decline in user activity following the airdrop. Daily active addresses dropped from over 100,000 in late 2023 to around 20,000 by April 2024. To counteract this, the Starknet Foundation launched initiatives like "DeFi Spring" to distribute more tokens and stimulate network participation.