An interesting development occurred during the highly anticipated Starknet airdrop event. According to a contract agreement updated by the Starknet team on Ethereum, the claiming process for the token to be distributed to protocols has been postponed from November 29, 2023 to April 15, 2024. According to an insider announcement, the team wants to focus on developing the ecosystem during this period. While the total supply of STRK tokens is known to be 10 billion, these tokens are currently locked in Ethereum contracts and cannot be traded.
STRK Locking Period Extended
A modification made on Sunday, according to Etherscan data, caused a major echo today. This change occurred in one of the StarkWare token locking mechanism contracts, and the previously determined token unlocking date has been postponed from November 29, 2023 to April 15, 2024. A StarkWare spokesperson commented on the matter:
“We are focusing on advancing the technology. We are updating the roadmap as needed, including this locking update.”
The number of tokens affected by this delay has not yet been clarified. It is known that the total supply of STRK tokens is 10 billion, and the tokens stored in Ethereum contracts cannot be traded at the moment.
The locked tokens affected by this delay were not allocated to any airdrop event and were reserved for protocols previously funded by StarkWare. Additionally, it is known that some of the tokens belong to early supporters of the StarkWare ecosystem and StarkWare employees.
The Emergence of STRK Token
According to a comment, the unlocking of two tokens is not always interconnected, and a delay in the first unlocking does not mean that the next unlocking will also be delayed. In addition, tokens allocated to the team in ecosystem airdrop events like this continue to remain locked for a long time to preserve their value.
The Starkware team announced in July 2022 that it would launch its own token and then created the STRK token on the Ethereum network in November 2022. An announcement made at that time confirmed that the STRK tokens allocated to project stakeholders, employees, and independent developers would be locked for four years. However, this changed a year later, and it was announced that a gradual unlocking program would begin from November 2023.
In November 2022, the StarkNet Foundation launched 50.1% of the STRK supply for the decentralized vision of StarkNet. In another statement, the team also announced that transaction fees, governance, and staking services on the StarkNet network will be provided with STRK tokens instead of Ethereum.
