The highly anticipated Ethereum layer-2 solution Starknet has experienced a surge in demand for its airdrop, pushing its fully diluted market cap to over $20 billion, despite facing controversies.
On February 20, the developers of Starknet allocated around 700 million STRK tokens out of a total supply of 10 billion. These tokens were distributed as rewards to various stakeholders, including Ethereum solo and liquid stakes, Starknet developers and users, as well as projects and developers outside the Web3 ecosystem. Within the first 90 minutes, 45 million STRK tokens were claimed, and this number has now exceeded 220 million.
Users have until June 20, 2024, to claim the remaining balance of tokens. Despite the initial excitement from investors, the price of STRK tokens has dropped to $2 from its opening high of $7 on the Binance crypto exchange. However, the protocol still maintains a high valuation, with a total value locked of $57 million.
On the same day, Banteg, a developer from Yearn Finance, accused Starknet developers of including airdrop squatters (or hunters) in the eligibility list, despite prior warnings. Banteg stated that only the data of the squatters was used, but not the renames. However, Banteg received confirmation from the Starknet developers that the renamed developers would not be excluded, and further updates are expected in the coming days.
Previously, Banteg had warned that out of the 1.3 million wallet addresses eligible for the STRK airdrop, approximately 701,544 addresses were allegedly associated with repeat or renamed GitHub accounts controlled by airdrop squatters.
Airdrop hunters aim to profit from airdrops by collecting tokens in the hope that they will increase in value. Professional airdrop hunters use scripts to consolidate multiple addresses into just a few. In March last year, it was revealed that airdrop hunters had consolidated $3.3 million worth of tokens from the Arbitrum (ARB) airdrop, which was distributed to 1,496 wallets, into only two wallets that they controlled.
Related: The risks and implications of crypto airdrop hunting for blockchain developers