Strong interest in the eagerly awaited Ethereum layer-2 solution Despite controversy, the protocol’s completely diluted market cap has surpassed $20 billion thanks to the Starknet airdrop.
Out of a total supply of 10 billion tokens, Starknet developers distributed about 700 million tokens on February 20 to reward Ethereum solo and liquid stake holders, Starknet developers, and users, in addition to projects and developers from outside the Web3 ecosystem. 45 million STRK tokens were claimed in the first ninety minutes, and as of right now, there are more than 220 million.
The deadline for users to claim their remaining amount is June 20, 2024. Though the protocol is still highly valued, the price of STRK tokens has now dropped to $2 from its opening high price of $7 on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, despite investor enthusiasm. The protocol currently has $57 million locked in its entire value.
The same day, Banteg, a developer for Yearn Finance, claimed that Starknet developers had disregarded earlier warnings and had placed airdrop squatters, also known as hunters, in their eligibility list. Banteg stated, “It looks from this commit only the squatters’ data was used, not the renames.” “Renamed developers won’t be left out, according to confirmation from Starknet developers. In a few days, we might learn more.”
Out of the 1.3 million wallet addresses that were eligible for the STRK airdrop, the Yearn Finance developer had earlier issued a warning that an estimated 701,544 addresses were reportedly linked to renamed or repeated GitHub accounts that were under the control of airdrop squatters.
By harvesting tokens from airdrops in the hopes that they will increase in value, airdrop hunters seek to gain money. Skilled hunters of airdrops use software to combine a large number of addresses into a small number. It was discovered in March of last year that airdrop hunters had combined tokens valued at around $3.3 million from 1,496 wallets during the previous Arbitrum (ARB) airdrop into only two wallets under their control.
