Starknet's "work-life balance" perks coming? A roundup of recent STRK-related developments
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Starknet's "work-life balance" perks coming? A roundup of recent STRK-related developments
Has the scale of stress testing revealed the airdrop scope?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
On the evening of January 30 (Beijing time), Starknet conducted a multi-hour stress test on its Goerli testnet. During this period, a total of 247,512 contract interactions marked as "claim" were executed.
CryptoTraalala.stark, a KOL who closely tracks Starknet community developments, commented that this may indicate the final number of STRK airdrop addresses will be fewer than 200,000. A stress test smaller in scale than the actual airdrop would be meaningless—the purpose is to verify network resilience under sudden traffic spikes. If Starknet planned to distribute tokens to 500,000 addresses, they wouldn't have limited testing to only 240,000 interactions.
As one of the most anticipated potential airdrop projects, Starknet has frequently been mocked for "thunder without rain," and even accused of calling users "digital beggars." Yet, in fact, over the past month, Starknet has carried out multiple rounds of clear testing activities related to STRK, allowing us to see that the launch of STRK is drawing ever closer.
STRK Update One: Cross-chain Transfer of STRK
On December 14 last year, community users discovered based on records from the Sepolia testnet that Starknet had already tested cross-chain transfers of STRK from Layer 1 to Layer 2 via the testnet.
Note from Odaily Planet Daily: The STRK token on Ethereum's mainnet (Layer 1) was deployed more than a year ago but hasn't officially circulated yet, except for some test or governance-related transfers. The STRK contract address is 0xCa14007Eff0dB1f8135f4C25B34De49AB0d42766.
On that day, users noticed multiple transactions involving STRK test tokens with the same prefix (0xca14) as the mainnet STRK contract on the Ethereum Sepolia testnet. One transaction transferring 1,234 test STRK tokens appeared to simulate a cross-chain transfer from Layer 1 to Layer 2.
Data from the Starknet Sepolia testnet showed that minutes after confirmation of the above transaction, an address starting with 0x0137 on the testnet received 1,234 test STRK tokens.
On December 26, about ten days after the initial experiment, Starknet officially added a "bridged_tokens" file to its GitHub repository, disclosing several STRK-related parameters on the Sepolia testnet:
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Layer 1 STRK contract address: 0xCa14007Eff0dB1f8135f4C25B34De49AB0d42766 (previously disclosed, consistent with mainnet);
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Layer 2 STRK contract address: 0x04718f5a0fc34cc1af16a1cdee98ffb20c31f5cd61d6ab07201858f4287c938d;
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Layer 1 STRK bridge contract address: 0x6FE45BEFC2C0E0F619D5ccFB6fA4D40590f6bC53;
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Layer 2 STRK bridge contract address: 0x0594c1582459ea03f77deaf9eb7e3917d6994a03c13405ba42867f83d85f085d.
On January 15—about a month after the initial trial—community members discovered that Starknet had conducted another test of STRK cross-chain transfers from Layer 1 to Layer 2 on the mainnet.
Chain data from Etherscan and Starkscan showed small STRK token transfers first occurred on the Ethereum mainnet, followed by equivalent STRK transfers appearing on Starkscan, suggesting the team was testing bridging STRK from Layer 1 to Layer 2.
Further evidence that these were bridging operations is that the STRK token contract involved in the Starknet mainnet transfer started with 0x0471—consistent with the token contract address Starknet previously disclosed in its GitHub repository for the Sepolia testnet.
STRK Update Two: Gas Support
On January 10, Starknet officially activated the major version upgrade V0.13.0, whose primary feature was adding support for V3 transaction types. This upgrade aims to enable future functionality enhancements on the Starknet network, such as supporting STRK as a gas token alongside ETH.
At the time, many in the community mistakenly interpreted the V0.13.0 upgrade date as the activation date for STRK’s gas functionality. However, Starknet later clarified: "The V0.13.0 upgrade includes technical preparations for using STRK as a gas token, but it does not mean STRK can currently be used to pay gas fees... The rails are laid, but the train isn’t running yet."
However, the official activation of STRK’s gas functionality likely isn’t far off—earlier today, Starknet core developer antiyro shared an on-chain transaction indicating that a transaction in block 524884 on the Starknet network successfully paid gas fees using STRK, meaning the team has begun formal testing of this function.
STRK Update Three: Testnet Claim Interactions
Compared to the two updates above, community users are probably more interested in developments related to the potential airdrop.
On January 26, community users discovered that Starknet executed numerous operations labeled "claim" on the testnet, seemingly testing the STRK airdrop claiming process.
On the same day, Starknet announced it would conduct a stress test on the Goerli testnet on January 30. Some community members speculated at the time that the test would primarily involve simulating large-scale claim interactions to assess network capacity—last night’s on-chain data confirmed this speculation.
Is Fortune Coming?
Drawing parallels from historical patterns—from testing STRK cross-chain transfers from Layer 1 to Layer 2 on the testnet (December 14) to conducting real-world trials on the mainnet (January 15)—Starknet took roughly one month between steps. By this logic, having already tested airdrop claims on the testnet this month, what might next month bring? It’s hard not to speculate.
Finally, it must be emphasized that this article merely summarizes recent developments related to the STRK token. No one knows exactly when the "blessing" will arrive—but judging from concrete testing progress, that day is drawing nearer.
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