StarkWare Revises STRK Token Release Structure Amid Community Concerns

According to CryptoPotato, blockchain firm StarkWare has announced a change in the token release structure for its layer 2 scalability protocol Starknet's STRK token. The decision comes after concerns from the community that the initial plan might enable the network's investors to dump their holdings onto retail Starknet users. Initially, StarkWare intended to unlock 1.3 billion STRK coins for investors and early contributors on April 15, following the token launch earlier this week. However, the short cliff period sparked controversy among Starknet users and the wider crypto community. In response to the feedback, StarkWare has implemented a more gradual token release for its early contributors and investors. Under the revised schedule, only 0.64% of the initially minted 10 billion tokens will unlock on April 15 instead of the originally planned 13.4% (1.34 billion tokens). The unlock process will proceed gradually, with a monthly unlocking rate of 0.64% (equivalent to 64 million tokens) until March 15, 2025. After this date, the monthly unlock rate will increase to 1.27% (127 million tokens) for the subsequent 24 months until March 15, 2027. The new unlock plan entails unlocking 580 million tokens held by early contributors and investors by the end of 2024, compared to the previous schedule, which would have seen 2 billion of those tokens unlocked within the same time frame. The original unlock schedule led to the price of STRK dropping, with the value plummeting nearly 60% from its peak of $4.41 on February 20 to trading below $1.90. However, following StarkWare's recent announcement, STRK has surged to over $2, an increase of 6% in the past day, according to CoinGecko data. Eligible individuals have claimed over 440 million STRK, representing 95% of the total STRK currently available for distribution, and Starknet's total value locked has surged to nine figures for the first time, doubling in the past 24 hours to reach $127.72 million, as reported by DefiLlama.