Starknet Token Launch Is Here! ($STRK)

The Stark token is here! After waiting for almost 6 years we're thrilled to share that one of the earliest and most promising layer 2's has just released official details on their token, STRK. They are provisioning it to users of Starknet, to stakers in the Ethereum ecosystem, open source developers and so many more. A total of 1.3 Million wallets are eligible to receive the $STRK token, are you one of them? Joining us today is Starkware founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson, and Starknet CEO Diego Oliva who are here to walk us through all you need to know about the big launch. ✅ Check Eligibility Here: https://provisions.starknet.io/ ------ 🏹 USE PODCAST24 FOR 10% OFF https://bankless.cc/Citizen2024 ------ 🎧 Listen On Your Favorite Podcast Player: https://bankless.cc/Podcast ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/toku 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💸 CRYPTO TAX CALCULATOR | USE CODE BANK30 https://bankless.cc/CTC 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 05:28 Timing Of The Launch 07:36 Denominate Fees in Stark Tokens 12:29 Starknet Readiness 16:53 Starkware/Starknet Company Design 21:24 Distribution of $STRK 26:01 Total Supply of Token 27:12 Provisions For Stakers 32:16 Provisions Via Staking Pool 33:10 StarkEx Users 36:44 Release Dates 40:26 What's Next? 43:43 Exciting Community Narratives 48:19 Closing Thoughts ------ RESOURCES Eli: https://twitter.com/EliBenSasson Diego: https://twitter.com/jdiegooliva Starknet: https://twitter.com/Starknet ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ https://www.bankless.com/disclosures%E2%81%A0

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, the Stark token is here. Well, just about, actually. We have the release details. We've been waiting for this event for almost six years. Starknet has been one of the earliest and most promising Layer 2s, and they have just released the details of their token. They are provisioning it to users of Starknet, to stakers in the Ethereum ecosystem, and to open source developers. We get into who is getting the Stark token? How much of the Stark token is getting distributed as a percentage? When does claiming actually begin? David, I just used this term provisions. Could you explain that for a minute?

• 0:37David Hoffman?

  That is what a Starknet version of an airdrop is. It is a provision. Users will probably hear provisions, but they'll think airdrops, that would be correct. These are just the terms that they have elected to use. On the show today, we have Ellie Ben-Sasson and Diego Olivia. Diego is the CEO of the Starknet Foundation. Ellie, of course, is one of two Starknet dads. These people have been with the ecosystem for years now, especially Ellie, who's been working on Starks since before Ethereum was even a thing. So we get into all the details that Ryan mentioned and more. Overall, just a long time coming for Starknet. As soon as we knew that Starknet was a thing, we all kind of knew that a token was going to be a thing. I went to the Starkware sessions

• 1:20David Hoffman?

  a little over a year ago in Tel Aviv, Israel, in February of last year. And it was just very clear that this Starknet, this network, was being built upon the shoulders of this community who just really loves to be there. This very technical, low-level devs, Starkmaxes, I like to call them. And so this network is being born on the shoulders of this community that's very ready to receive it. And the distribution of the Stark tokens, S-T-R-K, is also something that's pretty notable, and we get into all these details in the show. If you are in the Ethereum ecosystem, if you are an active participant, I think you'll be pretty happy. Let's go ahead and get into those details. But first, I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible,

• 2:02David Hoffman?

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• 2:47David Hoffman?

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• 3:32David Hoffman?

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• 4:16David Hoffman?

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• 4:58David Hoffman?

  Follow Cello on Twitter and visit cello.org to shape the future of Ethereum. Bankless Nation, we've got an exciting episode for you here today. First, on the podcast, we've got Diego Olivia, CEO of the Starknet Foundation. Diego, welcome to the show.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Thank you. Excited to be here.

• 5:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, very exciting. And of course, longtime Bankless listeners will remember Ellie. Ellie Ben-Sazin, one of the two fathers of Starknet, co-founder of Starkware, overall mathematician genius. Ellie, welcome back to the show.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Thanks. Thanks for having me here, David Ryan. Always a pleasure.

• 5:28David Hoffman?

  So this show, I think, is going to be extremely exciting. This has been a long time coming. Starkware, Starknet, and overall Starks has been a pillar of the crypto world even before Ethereum launched. And it's been no secret that eventually Starknet will decentralize and create a token and give it to its community. And today appears to be that day. Ellie, you have been around since the very beginning. Why now? Why is today the right day to do this? Why is 2024 Q1 the right time to do this? What were some of the decisions and calculus into making this choice? Why now?

• 6:04Speaker 03

  It was the earliest possible in terms of the technical and decentralization roadmap. We would have loved to do it much earlier, but this is when the system is ripe enough for it. We have now fees enabled in the Starknet token, which is the main utility for it.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  And we're making progress on other aspects of decentralization, like staking for the purpose of generating stark proofs and sequencing things. So this is just the earliest possible, and we would have loved to do it earlier if we could.

• 6:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Eli, what were some of the necessary criteria for provisioning a token? You sort of alluded to a few of this, this being sort of the earliest necessary time. Like, what needed to be in place exactly?

• 6:51Speaker 03

  The main thing that just was turned on with version 13 of the protocol is that we now have the ability to submit transactions where the fee is denominated in the Stark token. Prior to this, we just didn't have the, the, the protocol was not mature enough to support this capability. So this took time to build and bake. Now the protocol is ready for it. So this is the, you know, so we are turning on the transferability of the token for the purpose of paying for transactions on Starknet and later on, so that it flows to the operators that will stake it in order to operate the system and maintain it secure and decentralized.

• 7:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll get into a lot of the kind of the economics of the token itself, but since you just brought it up, Eli, I want to drill into this. So the decision to denominate fees in the Starknet token itself, why did you go in that direction? There are other Layer 2s that have chosen to denominate fees in, say, Ether. You know, some also have chosen to denominate in their native token. That seems to be the direction that you're taking. Why?

• 8:02Speaker 03

  We need those who care about Starknet, those who build it, those who maintain it and secure it through their work and operations. We need them to be the ones operating it, ensuring it, and also to be able to use it. And you see, if fees were denominated in Ether, they would flow towards the operators and also parts of it through things like Devonomics would flow to developers. But then all of those entities who care a lot about Starknet would have a little bit of Ether, not enough to make a dent into who controls Starknet. And this does not make sense.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  You need the decentralized Layer 2 to be controlled by an answer to those who care about. Are passionate about it through their actions and operations. So you really need the token of the L two to dictate things like operations staking. And a fee mechanism is just a very good way to ensure that there's inclusivity, that tokens and hence power and security is flowing towards those who are providing value to the network.

• 9:15David Hoffman?

  And of course, of course, a portion of the gas fees actually needs to in some way be converted to ether in order to purchase the block space from the Ethereum mainnet. Am I right about that? And how does that work in this mechanism?

• 9:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, a portion is indeed paid to Ethereum for the security and for basically putting the proofs and the state differences on layer one. But all of what's called the L two costs are going to be flowing to the operators and the stakers. And some of those are related to the capital costs for staking and also to the cloud costs and other costs of operating the system. And those are going to be flowing rightly to the entities who develop, maintain, secure, care about Starknet. By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if other L twos, like happened in other cases.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  You know, we are, sometimes we're claimed to be unaligned, but we are truly aligned with you know, future-proof technology and security. And I wouldn't be surprised if we will also be trailblazing, blazing a path here. And I wouldn't be surprised if you'll see other L twos also picking on the skew and turning on fees in their own tokens. I wouldn't be surprised.

• 10:38David Hoffman?

  Eli, I think you might be alluding to a tweet that I kind of fired off from the hip maybe about a month ago about like this exact subject Stark using its own currency as its gas token. And I just wanted to like just bring that up for a second because I called it like the most unaligned layer two. Once again, just firing from the hip. And really what I just meant by that was just like the The strong technical differences between Starknet and Ethereum. Ethereum alignment is kind of a meme, but I've always thought of it as like a technical conversation first and foremost, where you have like optimism and Arbitrum going for EVM equivalents, trying to be one-to-one compatible. And Starknet has always been, does not, that's not its direction at all. Starknet, I've kind of expressed, is a Stark maxi.

• 11:23David Hoffman?

  They believe in Starks, the whole ecosystem believes in Starks and scaling out the power of Starks. And so like alignment was meant to be just like a technical differentiator, not any sort of statement about being like misaligned with Ethereum in spirit. And so I just wanted to clear that up with there. I'm actually having a conversation with Abdel from Starkware, Starknet, on this very same subject. That'll be out, that'll be out soon. And I just always thought it was like a curiosity, is like what happens when Starknet leverages its own token for gas?

• 11:54Speaker 03

  I think the, I just want to say that I think the Starknet ecosystem is eternally grateful to you, David, for, you know, raising up this meme and just giving us so much good creative power, you know? We just really leaned into this unaligned, you know? We're proudly unaligned.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  It's a great, so, you know, thank you for.

• 12:19David Hoffman?

  The giving you the fodder, yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Labeling us as unaligned, it really helps us a lot.

• 12:24David Hoffman?

  I'll rebrand it as technically differentiated, perhaps. Maybe, maybe that's a better way to say it. Diego, I want to, I want to get you in here as well, CEO of the Starknet Foundation. Maybe you kind of can illuminate your role and the Starknet Foundation itself. And also maybe give your perspective on the choice of timing. Like, why, why is Starknet ready to be born, if you will? Because there's like the incubatory period of Starknet where it's being like spun up. But now this is like, now it's going out into the wild. It's, you know, there's kids getting dropped off at college, parents are saying goodbye. Starknet dads are waving goodbye, like you're on your own now. Diego, give us a little bit of your perspective about the readiness of Starknet.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think, well, Eli alluded the readiness from a technical standpoint, so I think he covered that. But I also think that it has taken some time for us, for our community and ecosystem, to get to a point where it was also ready to start this journey towards decentralization. And hence the creation of the foundation as well. And now, as a foundation, we're trying to sort of help the community lead its path towards decentralization. What that means, so what are the goals of the foundation? I can summarize them in three main points. One of them is about growth and decentralization.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  And growth means just getting on board as many developers, teams, applications, infrastructure, tooling, builders, to build on top of Starknet, to make us more resilient, and also to be more decentralized as we grow in terms of the number of teams and builders. So that's one thing that we're going to be doing at the foundation, focusing on bringing teams on board through education, obviously awareness, all types of workshops, hackathon, hacker houses, and also developer partnerships for those building, building infrastructure here. So really orchestrating the growth of our ecosystem, so nurturing that growth on our own. So that's number one objective.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Number two is around helping nourish our community and culture. And here, this, we believe is very, very important, because technology itself, making it work where we're now at a point where we're scaling it in terms of speed and reduction of cost, and that will continue. But actually, I think the bigger, more long-term challenge is how do we scale a team of teams? And I think it's going to be very important to get, like... You know, tens of thousands, hopefully, of developers and thousands of teams to work towards one mission, all, even if you have, you know, DeFi protocols or gaming companies

• 15:12Speaker 02

  or whatever it may be, and even competing ones, that we are all aligned by one goal, what we're trying to achieve with Starkit. And hence, we need to figure out a way to work together, to collaborate, to bring Starkit forward. And I think that's again, as a foundation, we need to facilitate those processes and make sure that we are aligned on the values that we have on Starkit as a community. And the foundation is sort of kind of leading from behind, just trying to see how we help the community find its own feet in this growth. And last, but related, last goal would be around governance and

• 15:54Speaker 02

  delivery. So, once we build that community, that culture, then what does that mean in terms of how we execute together? So, how do we figure out processes in terms of the committees, the necessary committees or councils, how we make decisions around the product roadmap, where, what features should come first, what verticals should we try to tackle, how differentiate, differentiate our own sales, what type of research should we be engaging in, and so forth, but also being sure, like, trying to help on the delivery. So, not because of governance and trying to, of course, include as many teams and the voices of many people, that we lack speed, because we need to be able to be inclusive in terms of decision-making, but at the same time, we need to deliver at pace. So, we need to be as effective as,

• 16:39Speaker 02

  I think, a centralized organization. And that's going to be like a paramount, like a really big challenge. And I think if we manage as a foundation to help the community solve these three goals, I think we're going to be going a long way. So, it's a lot of work in the years ahead.

• 16:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  So this this design where we have Ellie with the the co-founder of Starkware, which is a company and Diego, you are the CEO of the Starknet Foundation. We've seen sort of company plus foundation types of setups in other ecosystems. Other layer twos have adopted this sort of setup. DeFi protocols have, you know, with Uniswap, you have Uniswap the company and there's Uniswap the foundation. So I think a lot of Bankless listeners will understand the basics of this model, that there's two kind of entities. And I'm wondering if it's it's sort of it works the same or like, you know, Ellie, what is Starkware going to be doing moving forward versus what is the the foundation going to be doing? I mean, is Starkware done?

• 17:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is the work finished? Is it now passed to the foundation or there's still more work to do? Just talk to us about this, maybe relate it to other foundation plus company designs we've seen in crypto.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  One thing that's important to note that I think in which the Starknet Foundation is unique is that in most cases you have sort of labs and then undergoing mitosis, right? This process in biology where a cell splits evenly into two parts. And then one part is called labs and the other part is called the foundation. The Starknet Foundation is uniquely different in this respect. It is truly independent and you don't see anyone from the sort of core founding team and certainly not an even split. It's not that the labs has done mitosis.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  And I think the main thing about this, and again, it goes back to, you know, things about like vision and values. We take decentralization very seriously and the long-term viability of Starknet as an integrity web, as something that can be trusted by the public all around the world, really calls for this sort of independence. Now regarding Starkware, it has so much to do and it's also having so much fun doing it that, no, we're not going to go off to the Bahamas to drink cocktails and bathe in the sun.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  We are.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  As will be evident in the coming weeks,

• 19:27Speaker 03

  we're all about like

• 19:30Speaker 03

  trailblazing technology. So we have some very exciting technological breakthroughs to share with the world. Further on, our vision is, or our passion and our focus is on improving the technology even more. And the reason is that if you want to become the rails for the global economy, then, you know, as amazing as Starknet performance is right now, it's not yet ready for, you know, the 1 million TPS and more that you probably need for that. Now, we'll get there. There's nothing theoretically barring the technology from reaching it. But to answer your question, what will Starkware do?

• 20:15Speaker 03

  So alongside many other teams in the Starknet ecosystem will be advancing that mission and that vision of taking it really global.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  I mean, from the foundation, what I can say is what I would hope and expect is for Starkware to ship more and more as years go by, but their share going down, down because of all the other builders. So I think Starkware, we definitely work very closely and they are really important contributor. And we expect them to increase what they ship, but actually reduce their their share significantly as we grow the rest of the ecosystem, which is what's really exciting.

• 20:58David Hoffman?

  Maybe the differences and roles between these two organizations is actually contained in the name. Starkware, as in software, I'm pretty sure that's the right play off of words, software except for Starks. And this is the model that I think we've seen other organizations take where the original labs company becomes like the software service provider towards the actual network, Starknet. Net being everything else that it takes to foster and maintain and develop a network. Okay, so Diego, today is the date where we're getting a lot of the information. And there will be a link in the show notes on the YouTube for people to be able to just go read this blog themselves. But maybe you can kind of just rattle off some of the big, specific dates.

• 21:39David Hoffman?

  When will this provision be accessible towards the people that have been provisioned? And then we'll also get into some of the details behind who got what.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yes, so.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Today, we're announcing the provisions and now you can go to our website to check eligibility. So you can go there today and then the actual claim of the tokens will happen on February 20th next week.

• 22:06David Hoffman?

  So let's go ahead and get right into some of the details on the provisions here. And Diego, I'll continue with you here. What are the things that just really stand out as the big details about what about this provision program? Like what populations of people, what contributors? What do you want to highlight first before we get into some of the granular details?

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we're going to be distributing 700 million Starknet tokens to around 1.3 million addresses, which is the largest distribution ever made, which we're very, very proud of. And I think that's very, very exciting to try to include as many people to come aboard the Starknet and also Ethereum journey. So we're very excited about that.

• 22:48David Hoffman?

  1.3 million addresses. Can you start to like unpack who are these people? What are the different communities or just collections of people are receiving provisions here?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Yes, so over 50% of the tokens are going to be going to Starknet users. So those that help us really get, we're trying the applications, getting it ready, improving the usage, giving feedback to the builders and so forth. We have also close to 9% going to the Starknet community, which includes everyone from developers to also those organizing meetups, helping other developers to learn, helping everyone get acquainted with what Starknet is about. All the efforts about building our community that are going to be receiving tokens there.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  We also have around 2% of the of the distribution going for Starknet developers. So people that have really contributed to to the tooling and infrastructure that makes Starknet possible. And we're also having a good portion of tokens distributed to those contributing to Ethereum.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  And that is from ETH stakers. So we think that is very important that they have helped secure the network. So we want them to be compensated as well. So we have those that are doing it via pools, and that's around 17% of the distribution. And we have also around 5% of the distribution going to solo stakers that also take a bit more risk on that, but that are again, supporting the network. We have also an allocation to the Protocol Guild of Ethereum. So those that have helped maintain and secure Ethereum as well. And those are also have been doing the EIP authors as well, have an allocation

• 24:49Speaker 02

  as well. And then we have 2.1% going to the top 5,000 GitHub projects as well, which we're very happy again. We're trying to welcome as many developers to come to start it and contribute to Ethereum, broadly speaking. So I encourage all of you to go to our website to check for eligibility, and please be aware of scams. There is no token available yet. The claim of the tokens will be next week on the 20th. But go check eligibility as soon as possible.

• 25:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I gotta say, with all of the solo stakers and Ethereum developers and the Protocol Guild out there, it sounds like David, a pretty aligned move here. I don't know. I don't know what you would tweet about this. But I do think like a token distribution, token provisioning type of event sort of shows you a little bit where the network's values are and like what they're trying to incent moving forward. And I just wanted to applaud, you know, some rewards for some of the groups that you guys have decided to include there. But just before, I know David's going to do a recap in detail. So we make sure we capture all that detail. But before we get there, when you were talking about the percentage that are going to all these various groups, Diego, you were talking

• 26:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  about a percentage of the 700 million stark token distribution. It was relative to that, that that's 700 million amount. Is that correct?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  That's correct, yes.

• 26:14David Hoffman?

  Okay, and then the wider context of this. This is a new token. So what is the total supply of this new token? So we can take even the 700 million into context here.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Yes, the total supply of Stark token is of 10 billion Stark tokens. We still are working on the overall tokenomics of it. So we are still going to be working on proposals that we have to decide also inflation, which at the moment, one of the proposals is around 4%. But for the time being, we do have 10 billion Stark tokens.

• 26:50David Hoffman?

  Okay, so I kind of want to just recap the high level of categories that I see. I see four different categories here. The big one is Starknet users. So just users of Starknet. If you've, it sounds like if you just have an address that has produced a footprint on Starknet, you are getting a provision. And that's just, that's just the biggest category. That's probably where a lot of the addresses come from. There's a, then then there's the second category that I want to pull out, Ethereum stakers. And can we just talk about this category specifically really quick? Then there's the two other categories. These are both solo stakers and staking pools, correct, Diego? And can you talk about just like the parameters around?

• 27:32David Hoffman?

  I don't know if I've ever heard of a, of a provision going to staking pools. Can you talk about the logistics behind that? And just any dates that are relevant here?

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Maybe I can, I'd be happy to take this question. The first thing I want to point out is the rationale behind allocating to, to stakers. And remember that Starknet decentralization calls for having as broad as possible a set of individuals and a public that is interested in the operation and securing of decentralized networks. And if you ask yourself, okay, where can we find people who through their actions have demonstrated that they are passionate about this and want to help? And one glaring answer is of course, you know, folks like miners and stakers and operators. So when you're jumpstarting this broad

• 28:29Speaker 03

  Footing or distribution or foundation for the decentralized operation. It just makes a lot of sense to include this class. And that's

• 28:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ellie, is it basically because you you want them to come stake in the Starknet ecosystem?

• 28:45Speaker 03

  We want a broad set of independent operators so that you have a permissionless decentralized network. And you ask yourself, who's going to step up and and be willing to take the, you know, and has the technological and security understanding of the implications of things like staking and slashing and the, you know, responsibility that is entailed by it, you know, basically entrusting and securing funds for the public. And a very natural class that is already presenting itself and saying, hey, we're into that sort of thing are Ethereum stakers.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  So we want them to be part of this, just like we want Starknet developers to be sitting at the table. And, you know, if they're passionate about building things on Starknet as a public good, we want them to have tokens so they can operate the system.

• 29:42David Hoffman?

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• 30:26David Hoffman?

  provides milestone-based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure, and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first DAO-led Layer 2 ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantle.xyz and follow them on Twitter at You know Uniswap, it's the world's largest decentralized exchange with over 1.4 trillion dollars in trading volume. You know this because we talk about it endlessly on Bankless. It's Uniswap, but Uniswap is becoming so much more. Uniswap Labs just released the Uniswap Mobile Wallet for iOS, the newest, easiest way to trade tokens on the go. With the Uniswap Wallet, you can easily create or import a new wallet, buy crypto on any available exchange with your debit card with extremely low fiat on-ramp fees, and you can seamlessly swap on mainnet, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. On the Uniswap Mobile

• 31:11David Hoffman?

  Wallet, you can store and display your beautiful NFTs, and you can also explore Web 3 with the in-app search features, market leaderboards, and price charts, or use Wallet Connect to connect to any Web 3 application. So you can now go directly to DeFi with the Uniswap Mobile Wallet. Safe, simple custody from the most trusted team in DeFi. Download the Uniswap Wallet today on iOS. There is a link in the show notes. Are you launching a token? Is it already live? How are you managing the legal and tax obligations for providing token grants to your team? It's no secret that token management gets complicated. Between learning all the legal language and tax obligations in every country that your team is in, token grant management can feel like an obstacle course. But it doesn't have to. That's where Toku steps in. Toku provides practical tools to handle token grants, allowing for effective oversight of token distributions and payroll

• 31:56David Hoffman?

  tax compliance for employees, contractors, advisors, and investors. They also handle tax withholdings through their real-time tax calculations that can be done by Toku or integrated into any payroll EOR providers in any jurisdiction. Toku is a trusted provider of Protocol Labs, DYDX Foundation, Mina Protocol, and many more. Get started for free and make token compensation simple at toku.com/bankless. Diego, one of the provisions here is to staking pools, which I think might be logistically novel. I don't know if we've ever seen that before. Can you talk about just what that means, if how if we're receiving a provision via Staking pool? Like, what should people know?

• 32:34Speaker 02

  But for all of you that are staking via a pool, then you need to contact your pool operator to get information on how you can get your Stark. But for all of you doing solo staking, then be sure to go to our website to check eligibility.

• 32:51David Hoffman?

  Beautiful, beautiful. Okay, so that's the relatively large Ethereum stakers category. The next category of the pattern that I'm seeing here is what I'll call kind of like the pre-Starknet ecosystem, and this is StarkEx users. And then the Starknet developers, which we already went into a pretty good detail, and then the Starknet community. I want to hang on to StarkEx users. Who are these people? StarkEx? Who are some of these products that have been out in the wild for the last number of years? That if people have used these things, they would be considered here. Who are StarkEx users?

• 33:26Speaker 03

  So StarkEx users, first of all, the technology underlying Starknet is completely novel. It is, you know, the first usage of Stark proofs alongside a novel virtual machine, Cairo and a programming language that is ergonomic and safe that uses it. And all of this in production. Now, the first setting in which this novel L2 was tested and brought to production was through the StarkEx systems. And the Cairo language, which now supports Starknet, was honed and finessed on that platform.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  So the foundations of Starknet and its security and its UX and a lot of other good properties about it are inherited from StarkEx and have been tested and vetted by the users of DYDX, Sorare, Immutable, Rhino, and a bunch of others. And just like the users of Starknet have offered a terrific service to Starknet, and they are

• 34:44Speaker 03

  Natural candidates to be provisioned so that they can participate in the journey that is Starknet. The same thing applies to the early users of the technology on StarkEx. Along the way, this will be another class that hopefully brings many novel Web 2 people to the Web 3 setting because some of the users, for instance, of Sorare and other of these systems are not necessarily native Web 3, and this will be a good way to introduce them to Web 3 technology.

• 35:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we actually often talk about trying to build products for mainstream, and Sorare has already done that. And so these might be like a large supply of addresses that don't know that they are getting a token, a very important token. And then I think like you just called out DYDX, the first implementation of DYDX was a StarkEx chain, which I believe I will be getting a provision from my early degeneracy in 2019 and 2020 when I was using DYDX. And then Immutable, for anyone who was using God's Unchained or some of the early gaming platforms, a pretty wide set of users here because the history of StarkEx chains goes back really, really far.

• 36:03David Hoffman?

  And so you also called out Rhino, previously known as Diversify, I believe, a very early exchange using StarkEx as well. So that is probably a pretty broad set of people who have been inside of the Ethereum and crypto community for a very long time. So that's what I call the pre-Starknet ecosystem. And then there's the Ethereum builders, 1% to the Protocol Guild, 3.3% of all Ethereum developers who contributed at least three commits before November in 2023, EIP authors, and then of course, that last category, the Starknet users. Okay, 1.3 million addresses, by far the largest distribution in address terms.

• 36:47David Hoffman?

  One more time, I know we've talked about some of the logistics and details here, but there's been a lot of fissures in this world. But Diego, just give us the dates and what people need to do. There's a link in the show notes for all of this information. Just give us the dates one more time about when people can go access their provision.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Yes, so today you should go to our website to check for eligibility. So you should go there as soon as possible. But the claim itself starts on the 20th of February. So nothing before that is real. So be be careful with scams and emails and things that people are already unfortunately sending. Nothing will be happening on the February 20th. And be sure to check the official handles of the foundation and and just always double check that you're going to the right place. But again, I repeat, today, go check eligibility on our website and the claim starts on February 20.

• 37:49David Hoffman?

  And the story actually is not over. This is the Starknet Provisions Program, and this is the first provision of more. Can you talk about the future? What does the future of this program look like? How will future provisions be determined and decided?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  So for us, actually, this is a very important milestone for our community, because it has taken a lot of work of a lot of people believing in Starknet users, builders, all together to get to this point. And it is a very important point in our in our history, but it's really the beginning. So this is just a way, a first step in terms of decentralization, to get all these 1.3 million addresses, sort of a stake in our protocol, and for them to participate. But ultimately, this is going to be a marathon. So what we would like is for more people to come and build and, you know, build great infrastructure, great tooling, great dApps on Starknet. And that should be part of the community.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  And what we want to do is to continue to nourish that through the foundation with all the programs we will have and and just invite them to participate in this journey of just basically making Starknet and Ethereum better. So so this is just the first step. That's why it's the first step in provisions, but there will be more more things to come. And we have already other programs and, you know, all types of grants and education we provide for builders and users as well.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  If I may, I just want to say it's a it's really a day of. Big celebration for the Starknet community. First and foremost, for the amazing ecosystem of developers and visionaries who've gone through so much and really devoted their past few months or years to making this such a success. And it is a milestone in the road to decentralization and to independence and flourishing of Starknet

• 39:55Speaker 03

  as an important Layer 2 scaling Ethereum and bringing Web 3 to global usage.

• 40:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  I appreciate you guys releasing all these details. And this episode goes live on Valentine's Day, too. So, you know, it's the 14th of February. So maybe there's some love in the air to the Starknet community. And so the 14th, this is being announced, the 20th, people can actually access their tokens for the first time. And so they should go see if they're eligible, and then they should go access them. But my question is, then what? So I got some tokens. Cool. Maybe David's got some tokens from his DYDX stuff back a few years ago. Then the question in my mind is, now what? What do I do with these tokens? So can I stake them? Should I just wait and hold on? Are there governance proposals to get involved with?

• 40:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because of course, you know, provisioning a token like this, with great token comes great responsibility. Tell us what some of the responsibilities are for token holders.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  So I can answer this. First of all, governance has been already live for quite some time. And you are urged to participate in governance, or, you know, if you want to be a delegate for others to delegate their governance rights to you, please consider doing so. There are a number of staking-related proposals in the works by various teams. There will be, you know, there will be a number of staking proposals. I know for a fact because Starkware is again working on one such proposal. And but, you know, it's not, this is not yet live.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  I would say that you are Urge to explore all of the cool things that are now live on Starknet. They're very interesting gaming, sustainability, DeFi and other products and protocols. I don't want to mention anyone in particular, just because there's so many of them. And I will probably do a disservice to the others. But explore the ecosystem, see what you believe in and see what brings value to you. I think there is a large number of very interesting things to participate in there.

• 42:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, one cool thing about these tokens, of course, is that they are gas tokens. So of course, you know, all of the things that Ellie was just talking about. Now you can pay for those things if you're a recipient of the Starknet token. You can actually use them within the system. Diego, were you going to say something too?

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Well, I think also, I think we see it as well as an opportunity to inspire other builders, inspire users to come and experience not only the dApps that are already here, but what's possible with this technology. So hopefully this distribution brings many more people or makes many more people aware of Starknet and what you can do with the Starknet network. And hopefully the token is part of that discovery. But it's not really the goal. It's just part of the mechanism we use to build some amazing things.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  So I do hope that people are encouraged to then sort of come and visit the Starknet world, experience already what's out there and be inspired to build and participate in the ecosystem.

• 43:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, as we end this episode, let's talk about that for a moment. So when a token is provisioned, of course, you know, the full spotlight of everything in crypto is on that particular project. And so I imagine for the next few weeks, the full spotlight will be on Starknet. And so I'm wondering if this is maybe for people who are not as familiar with the Starknet community. What are the most exciting things going on in the community? And Ellie, you don't have to name particular projects unless of course you want to, but you can talk about maybe categories. You can talk about maybe the future roadmap of Starknet. What to you is most exciting about traction and some of the real world use cases and things going on that people should come and explore?

• 44:13Speaker 03

  One huge theme that is already exploding on Starknet is on-chain gaming, right? It's very hard to put the on-chain, the logic of a game on-chain because that's a lot of compute. Well, on Starknet with its scale, this is possible. So there's a lot of very interesting on-chain gaming projects out there. Please explore them. That's one thing that I'm very enthusiastic about. Another thing is just the sheer performance and cost improvements that are in line. We hope to be ready with EAP 4844 support pretty much from the minute it's turned on.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  There is a lot of work going on regarding further enhancements to the performance in terms of number of compute steps and simultaneously reduction of the cost to users, which will make Starknet much faster and cheaper. Now, another thing that is unique to Starknet and goes again to our technological innovation and sort of independence and, you know, courage, I would say, technological courage, is that Starknet is the only L2 with 100% native account abstraction,

• 45:41Speaker 03

  which means amazing web2-like UX for both the onboarding and the usage. So I think users coming already to claim the token are expected to see a very novel, well, novel for web3, but kind of expected in web2. And I think we'll see a lot more usage of things like smart wallets, you know, AKA account abstraction by a lot of the major wallets and DeFi protocols.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  And then further down the line, one thing to keep an eye on is that, so let's take a very broad view. So Starknet now with its token is something that has been, you know, being baked in the oven for roughly six years. Starkware started working on it in 2018 and prior to this, there was like 20 years of research at least. I myself devoted probably a decade of research to that. We are very enthusiastic about some big technological breakthroughs on both the product and the engineering and the math side that are going to be unveiled in the coming weeks. And it will take some time, you know, months to years for them to

• 46:57Speaker 03

  reach production and for everyone to enjoy them. But that's, that's where our passion lies and that's where we're focusing on, on the horizon, on long-term viability. That's where we're heading.

• 47:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, when I hear you say technological breakthroughs, I get very excited because Starkware has always been pushing the frontier of crypto and certainly has on L2s from the very beginning and, you know, Stark's math and technology and cryptography so far. So one thing I'll plus one is the on-chain gaming community in the Starknet ecosystem is absolutely popping off. That's where I see a ton of the, the energy and potential. And also account abstraction wallets. So Bankless listener, you've heard David and I talk about these before. This is an experience that's similar to fintech. Revolut, it's similar to Venmo, if you use something like that. It's not kind of the clunky EOA type of account that we're used

• 47:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  to in most Layer 2s. And on Ethereum is certainly the future. And one benefit is that Starknet has that baked in from the ground up. There's a wallet that I've been a big fan of for a while called Argent that actually completely migrated and deployed to Starknet, I believe in large part for account abstraction type of support. So this is definitely a frontier and has some differentiators from other L2s that you should absolutely look into. Diego, anything else you want to say in conclusion? What's, you know, how do we wrap up this episode in this monumentous event?

• 48:30Speaker 02

  For me, if I can say something, I think you're absolutely right. And Ellie summarized it well, like we have incredible math, cryptography, technology. It's really mind blowing, but I can tell you that many people come for the tech, but stay for the community. One thing that is, I feel like really, really encouraging and what makes Starknet great is actually the community of builders we have, how everyone helps each other and also just the broader community of users as well. I think everyone is very, very passionate about what we're doing here together and also passionate to the extent that we always take the more difficult road with Cairo as a language

• 49:15Speaker 02

  and, and, and just the differences we have in the way we, we build different. But the support you get from the community in gaming, when any other field is, is very unique. So I would just say that please do come, enjoy the tech, come for the tech, but I'm pretty certain you'll stay for our community.

• 49:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, Ellie, anything, any last comments from you?

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, so a lot of the excitement, including next steps and things that will be unfolding, some of that will be already revealed at Stark City Denver, which will take place as part of ETH Denver on February 28th. So please join us, Diego, myself, a lot of the Starknet Foundation and Starkware and Starknet ecosystem folks are going to be there. We'd love to tell you what's on our minds, what we're working on and just celebrate Starknet.

• 50:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Amazing. Ellie, Diego, thank you so much for joining us. Certainly big news. Congrats. It's been a long journey, a six-year journey. You guys have done this very methodically and we certainly appreciate you spending time to educate the Bankless Nation on what's going on. We appreciate you.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you.

• 50:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless listeners, there will be links in the show notes, of course. One to the blog post, which you've got to check out, has all the distribution details. Anything we didn't cover in this episode will be there. There will also be a link to the eligibility criteria that Diego kept mentioning throughout this episode. That is the official place to check whether you are eligible.

• 50:49David Hoffman?

  Careful about other links.

• 50:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, at the time of release of this episode, that is February 14th. To be clear, you will not be able to actually claim any Stark tokens, okay? That happens later, that happens on the 20th, but you can check your eligibility. So make sure you don't get phished, you don't get scammed. Also, we'll include a link to details on the ETH Denver event that Ellie was talking about. Got to end with this, of course. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.