Starknet Activity Falls Sharply Following Ethereum Airdrop Hype

By Reza Jafery

After Starknet saw a surging number of active wallet addresses around last week's airdrop announcement, the number has fallen substantially in recent days as the actual drop approaches.

The Starknet airdrop dominated the headlines last week, both for the ample size of the drop but also the frustration some community members felt once the finer details were revealed. Starknet is set to proceed with the airdrop tomorrow, February 20, and will distribute STRK tokens to almost 1.3 million eligible wallets. 

Last week’s news caused a huge spike in active addresses on Starknet, with the tally jumping from less than 20,000 addresses on February 9 to a recent high of 226,576 addresses on February 14. That’s the date that Starknet divulged full details around the upcoming drop.

The daily total now, five days after the announcement, has settled to around 70,000 according to data from the Starkscan explorer. And while last week’s spike was a sizable increase over the average, Starknet has seen an even larger peak daily tally in the past—about 386,000 active wallets on July 28, 2023.

Trading volume also spiked last week but has returned to a more normal level. February 14 was the network's top day over the last month with over $122 million worth of trading volume, but the tally had fallen by half as of yesterday, with less than $61 million worth on February 18—a pretty typical day, per Starkscan data.

Even amid the recent ebb and flow in active wallets, the total value of assets locked on Starknet remains relatively unchanged. DefiLlama reports that on the day of the announcement, the protocol had a total value locked (TVL) of $55.26 million. Today, it sits at $54.35 million.

Despite many community members speaking out against the way the airdrop criteria was handled, it doesn’t appear that too many of them have put their money where their mouths are and actually left the protocol.

One key point of contention in the airdrop announcement was the token unlock schedule, which would reward team members just two months after the token goes live. Crypto projects often have much longer cliffs for team token vesting—sometimes years out from the launch. StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson dismissed the complaints last week in an interview with Decrypt.

“The unlocking for the team and early investors… is one aspect in which we may be non-standard,” Ben-Sasson said. “But we build different and we view things a little bit differently.”

Starknet has been a highly anticipated airdrop on Crypto Twitter for months. The fall in active addresses could reflect the airdrop farmers who had been banking on the token distribution, but ultimately moved on to greener pastures—that is, chains that haven’t released their tokens yet. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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