Starkware co-founder responds to STRK unlocking controversy

On February 15th, Starkware co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson emphasized the roadmap of Starknet in an interview with Decrypt regarding the "large unlocking of shares for investors and early contributors in the initial release of STRK," explaining why he believes this will not harm the community. Ben-Sasson stated that the structure of Starknet's airdrop is indeed different from traditional models, and the team has slightly different views on things, believing it to be an advantage rather than a disadvantage for Starkware. The team believes that what users care about is whether developers in the Starkware or Starknet ecosystem will still be active on the network and continue to drive its development three months or one year later. He can assure that Starkware's 150 employees and its growing team are solely focused on advancing Starknet. To do this well, Eli turned down very attractive academic positions.

As for concerns that investors may rush to sell STRK tokens in April, potentially affecting STRK's price, Ben-Sasson stressed that extending token lock-up periods cannot prevent such situations from happening; these concerns could also arise a year later. The decision made by Starkware was based on rewarding those individuals who contributed appropriately without any misuse of the airdrop structure by them personally or as part of their teams. Unnecessarily delaying lock-up periods is not considered a correct practice when focusing on long-term development.

It is reported that on April 15th, less than two months after STRK was launched, over 1.3 billion STRK tokens (13.1% of total supply) allocated to investors and early contributors to Starknet will unlock for transfer and sale. Based on futures trading prices, this amount is estimated to exceed $21.5 billion dollars.