The highly anticipated Ethereum layer-2 solution, Starknet, has experienced overwhelming demand for its airdrop, resulting in the protocol’s fully diluted market cap exceeding $20 billion, despite facing controversies.
On February 20th, the developers of Starknet allocated approximately 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 surpassed 220 million.
Users have until June 20, 2024, to claim the remaining balance of tokens. However, despite the enthusiasm from investors, the price of STRK tokens has fallen to $2 compared to its initial high price of $7 on the crypto exchange Binance. Nevertheless, 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, alleged that Starknet developers included airdrop squatters (or hunters) in their eligibility list, despite prior warnings. Banteg stated, “It appears from this commit only the squatters’ data was used but not the renames. Got a confirmation from Starknet devs that the renamed devs won’t be left out. we may hear more in a few days.” Banteg had previously warned that out of the 1.3 million wallet addresses eligible for the STRK airdrop, approximately 701,544 addresses were potentially linked to repeat or renamed GitHub accounts controlled by airdrop squatters.
Airdrop hunters are individuals who aim to profit from airdrops by farming tokens, hoping that they will increase in value over time. These professional hunters use scripts to consolidate multiple addresses into just a few. Last year, it was revealed that airdrop hunters consolidated $3.3 million worth of tokens from the Arbitrum (ARB) airdrop, which involved 1,496 wallets, into only two wallets that they controlled.
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The Risks and Rewards of Crypto Airdrop Hunting for Blockchain Developers