Opinion | Why did the Starknet airdrop reach millions of wallets? And why now?

Starknet airdrop is imminent, whether it is the unprecedented scale of airdropped wallets or the brand pressure of carrying ZK Layer2 transactions, has become a unique challenge that needs to be considered in the design of this airdrop. Cryptocurrency researcher Haotian analyzes how Starknet will use airdrop actions to respond to challenges in the increasingly competitive L2 market.

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Starknet Full of Challenges

Brand Pressure

The current L2 competition has become intense. Projects like Arbitrum, Starknet, or zkSync have technical and brand advantages, but they also face significant pressure to deliver results.

Insufficient ZK Layer2 Narrative

ZK Layer2 projects have long been stuck in the narrative of technical superiority, lacking in developer resources, ecosystem projects, TVL, user volume, user experience, and other comprehensive data indicators falling short of expectations.

On the other hand, the strategic approach of the development tool kit Stack is more of a traditional B2B venture narrative, lacking sufficient appeal to attract secondary market investors.

Rollups Strategy Interpretation: Why don't mainstream Layer2 projects decentralize the sequencer? Why is the introduction of Stack a method of untangling?

Increasing Competitors

Recently, a large number of new challengers trying to disrupt the Layer2 landscape have emerged. Projects like Metis attempt to overtake through decentralized sequencers and native token economies, while Manta, ZKFair, Blast, among others, are trying to use market, operations, and capital power to rise in competition.

How will the privacy-focused Layer2 project Manta Pacific break through zk Rollups competition as a latecomer?

Additionally, projects like Celestia, Altlayer, Espresso continue to add new variables to the Layer2 market with a modular mindset.

In the year following the Cancun upgrade, market competition is expected to intensify, potentially giving rise to a new set of Layer2 leaders.

Starknet Airdrop Design

To address these challenges, Starknet has designed the timing, scale, and token economics of the airdrop cleverly.

Lowering Airdrop Standards to Maintain Brand Influence

Originally, there were rumors and speculations surrounding the standards, scale, and coverage of Starknet's airdrop, causing uncertainty. Suddenly announcing a super large airdrop of over 700 million STRK to more than 1.3 million addresses surprised many, taking care of every participant in the ecosystem.

As a popular project where market participants deliberately trade to participate in airdrops, Starknet's airdrop standard design is challenging as it requires balancing various interests and avoiding excessive selling pressure from the airdrop. Ultimately, the Starknet team chose to reward early contributors to ECMP, GitHub open-source developers, and users of the Starknet network with a larger-scale blessing.

This is likely the ultimate choice for high-profile projects like zkSync, LayerZero, when brand influence reaches a certain level, a sunshine-filled airdrop operation is the wisest choice.

The primary goal is to ensure that the airdrop activity does not have a negative impact on the established brand value, giving more rewards to airdrop hunters may increase some risks, but a large-scale airdrop operation is more beneficial for the long-term development of the brand.

Using Token Incentives for Ecosystem Growth

The Starknet airdrop is a redemption action. This is because, as mentioned earlier, ZK Layer2 projects have been stuck in the narrative of technical superiority, lagging behind in various market aspects.

Especially with the total locked value of the entire Layer2 ecosystem exceeding 25.5 billion USD, while Starknet, ranking among the top five in brand reputation, accounts for less than 200 million USD. How can such data instill confidence in secondary market investors? This has been a key concern for Starknet and zkSync.

In this scenario, the team has brought out the killer move of token economics, hoping to turn the market narrative around. Haotian believes that tokens can successfully bring growth momentum to Starknet, especially since the STRK token has unique mechanisms, such as being used as fuel fees for project development and user interaction, leaving room for imagination.

Recommended Reading: Why Rollups Should Not Use Protocol Native Tokens as Fuel Payment Currency?
Recommended Reason: The Starknet network will use its own token STRK as fuel fees, different from using ETH, which will have different impacts on L2 projects. It is important to understand before participating in the Starknet ecosystem.

Intention Behind Launching Before the Cancun Upgrade

The significance of the Cancun upgrade to ZK Rollups market is much greater than OP Rollup. If the Cancun upgrade is the icing on the cake for OP Rollup, then it is a game-changer for ZK Rollup.

With the same blob capacity, compared to OP Layer2, ZK Layer2 can increase the TPS upper limit, thereby reducing the average cost of fuel fees. Coupled with the impending fuel fee subsidy war, theoretically, more developers and users will flock to the zero-knowledge proof ecosystem. The Cancun upgrade will be the turning point for the ZK ecosystem to catch up with and counterattack the OP ecosystem.

Starknet launching tokens before the Cancun upgrade undoubtedly expresses its determination to fight back after the upgrade. If Starknet's token economics proves effective, it will inevitably drive the issuance of tokens for other zero-knowledge proof projects like zkSync, Scroll, Linea, etc.

Starknet's Counterattack Begins

To address market challenges, Starknet has made the best choice among existing options—leveraging a large-scale token airdrop combined with the Cancun upgrade narrative to drive ecosystem growth, moving away from the long-term technical development narrative and beginning to engage with the market.

Regardless of the technology, the success of a product ultimately depends on application and demand-driven factors. The market needs to produce several killer applications to drive the Starknet market ecosystem, with tokens becoming the team's biggest weapon.

Whether the market will buy into this strategy remains to be seen.