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The first phase of the Starknet Provisions airdrop campaign has concluded, and I would like to share some personal insights. Please note that none of the following constitutes investment advice, nor necessarily reflects the positions of StarkWare or the Starknet Foundation. DYOR.
What is Starknet? Why STRK?
Starknet is a ZK-Rollup network. We launched Starknet in alpha mode in November 2021, aiming to scale Ethereum using STARKs cryptographic protocols while maintaining Ethereum’s core principles of decentralization, transparency, inclusivity, and security.
The STRK token empowers individuals wishing to contribute to the ecosystem in governance, operations, and protection of the Starknet network. STRK primarily serves three purposes: governance, paying gas fees on Starknet, and participating in Starknet’s consensus mechanism.
The Starknet Foundation is distributing STRK tokens to valuable community members who have shown commitment to advancing, maintaining, and protecting Starknet through various initiatives like Devonomics, Catalyst, DeFi Spring, and the focus of this article, Provisions (the airdrop).
On February 14, 2024, the Starknet Foundation announced the first phase of the Provisions plan, intending to distribute up to 700 million STRK tokens from a reserve of 900 million STRK allocated for Provisions. The claiming period lasted four months, from February 20, 2024, to June 20, 2024, resulting in approximately 500 million tokens claimed, with around 400 million STRK remaining for future airdrop rounds.
What are the goals of Provisions?
Provisions aims primarily to distribute STRK tokens to a broad spectrum of individuals—real users—who will engage with Starknet and contribute to its security and governance, thus advancing its decentralization. Starknet functions not just as a technology but also as a social tool, enabling individuals and societies to achieve various social functions like currency, assets, and governance. Therefore, the security and resilience of Starknet directly correlate with the size and care of its community.
One significant challenge Provisions faces is that “blockchains cannot represent real human beings.” Essentially, the fundamental unit on-chain is an account address, not a human/user, with no clear correspondence between the two. Thus, determining which accounts represent individuals/users most likely to contribute to Starknet’s future operations, security, and governance based on on-chain and other data poses a challenge.
It is clear that existing data is insufficient to precisely solve this issue. All potential computational methods involved in Provisions’ design acknowledge that any distribution method can only achieve a relative result, not absolute precision. Some individuals perfectly aligned with Starknet’s mission might receive few or no tokens, while others less aligned might receive a significant amount.
Given public criticisms faced by Starknet Provisions and subsequent airdrops like Eigenlayer, ZKsync, and LayerZero, I believe it’s crucial to clarify. To my knowledge, no existing solution offers greater accuracy or fairness than what we have attempted. While the distribution scheme may not be perfect, adopting alternative metrics would lead to different inaccuracies.
How did the Starknet Foundation design the airdrop?
The Starknet Foundation included six groups in the airdrop, each group’s allocation based on relevant metrics/data associated with that group:
1. Starknet Users: Activity metrics considered, with third-party witch screening performed.
2. STARK Early Adopters: Allocation based on prior usage of StarkEx before Starknet.
3. Ethereum Contributors: Includes individuals contributing to Ethereum in various capacities (staking, development, EIP submissions), with specific metrics for each sub-category.
4. Github Developers: Allocation based on GitHub activity, targeting developers of selected open-source projects on GitHub.
5. Early Community Members Program (ECMP): Individuals contributing to the Starknet ecosystem through activities and community development, evaluated by a committee of ecosystem members.
6. Developer Partners (DP): Infrastructure developers who had prior agreements with the Starknet Foundation.
In summary, Starknet aims to distribute STRK to a diverse range of groups based on their past actions and contributions, believing them well-suited to operate, care for, and protectcommunity insights into refining token distribution mechanisms on the Starknet forum.
I’m eager to hear more thoughts and suggestions from within and outside the ecosystem on improving these mechanisms.
