TechFlow news — Ethereum scaling solution StarkWare announced today its plans to launch a governance token called the StarkNet Token, confirming recent speculation by Su Zhu, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital.
The token will enable community supporters to contribute to the ecosystem's success and participate in its governance. So far, 10 billion tokens have been minted off-chain and allocated to various parties, including StarkWare investors and core contributors. These tokens are set to go live on StarkNet in September.
Tokens allocated to core contributors and investors will be subject to a four-year vesting period with a one-year cliff. StarkWare is also establishing the StarkNet Foundation, which will be funded by grants of StarkNet tokens and tasked with advancing the development and adoption of StarkNet. No tokens have been distributed to the StarkNet community thus far. StarkWare stated that next year it will distribute tokens to the community based on "verifiable contributions." The company added that when such distributions are announced, they will only consider snapshots taken prior to the announcement date, and recipients will be filtered at the time of the airdrop.
The StarkNet token will serve three primary purposes. It will be used for governance of the StarkNet blockchain. Starting in 2023, users will be able to stake tokens to contribute to the layer’s performance and security. Additionally, while StarkNet currently uses ETH to pay for transaction fees, the new token will eventually replace ETH for this purpose.
