High demand in the much-anticipated Ethereum layer-2 solution Starknet airdrop has caused the protocol’s fully diluted market cap to surpass $20 billion despite controversies.
On Feb. 20, Starknet developers allocated approximately 700 million STRK tokens out of a total supply of 10 billion to reward Ethereum solo and liquid stakes, Starknet developers and users, as well as projects and developers from outside the Web3 ecosystem. Within the first 90 minutes, 45 million STRK tokens were claimed and have since surpassed 220 million.
Users have until June 20, 2024, to claim the remaining balance. Despite investor enthusiasm, the price of STRK tokens has since fallen to $2 compared to its opening high price of $7 on the crypto exchange Binance, albeit the protocol still holds a high valuation. Currently, the protocol has a total value locked of $57 million.
The same day, Yearn Finance developer Banteg alleged that Starknet developers included airdrop squatters (or hunters) in its eligibility list despite prior warnings. “It appears from this commit only the squatters’ data was used but not the renames,” Banteg wrote. “Got a confirmation from Starknet devs that the renamed devs won’t be left out. we may hear more in a few days.”
regret to inform, but we could not, in fact, free wavey.
it appears from this commit, only the squatters data was used but not the renames.
pour one out for the fallen devs and may the next airdrop await them in valhalla.https://t.co/N2KTloFdqr https://t.co/xbmscftin0 pic.twitter.com/ne7ZUUxS3m— banteg (@bantg) February 20, 2024
The Yearn Finance developer previously warned that out of the 1.3 million wallet addresses eligible for the STRK airdrop, an estimated 701,544 addresses were allegedly linked to repeat or renamed GitHub accounts controlled by airdrop squatters.
Airdrop hunters aim to make money by farming tokens from airdrops, hoping they will become valuable. Professional airdrop hunters utilize scripts to consolidate many different addresses into only a handful. Last March, it was revealed that airdrop hunters consolidated $3.3 million worth of tokens from the then Arbitrum (ARB) airdrop from 1,496 wallets into just two wallets they had controlled.
Related: The gamble of crypto airdrop hunting and what it means for blockchain devs