StarkWare, a blockchain firm developing layer 2 scalability protocol Starknet, announced that it is changing the token release structure set for STRK.

The move comes after concerns from the community that the initial plan might enable the network’s investors to dump their holdings onto retail Starknet users.

StarkWare Releases New Token Release Structure

Initially, StarkWare intended to unlock 1.3 billion STRK coins for investors and early contributors on April 15, following the token launch earlier this week. However, the short cliff period sparked controversy among Starknet users and the wider crypto community. Concerns arose regarding the significant unlock, representing approximately 13% of the total STRK supply, and its potential impact on the token’s price.

In a post on X, StarkWare announced it would review its lockup schedule following the feedback and implement a more gradual token release for its early contributors and investors.

Important update:

After listening to feedback from ecosystem friends and collaborators, we are changing the lockup schedule for StarkWare’s early contributors and investors to make it more gradual.

We value this community and want to earn its trust by building great tech that…

— StarkWare (@StarkWareLtd) February 22, 2024

According to the statement, under the revised schedule, only 0.64% of the initially minted 10 billion tokens will unlock on April 15 instead of the originally planned 13.4% (1.34 billion tokens).

StarkWare further elaborated that the unlock process will proceed gradually, with a monthly unlocking rate of 0.64% (equivalent to 64 million tokens) until March 15, 2025. After this date, the monthly unlock rate will increase to 1.27% (127 million tokens) for the subsequent 24 months until March 15, 2027.

The new unlock plan entails unlocking 580 million tokens held by early contributors and investors by the end of 2024, compared to the previous schedule, which would have seen 2 billion of those tokens unlocked within the same time frame.

Starknet’s STRK Token Price Surges

The original unlock schedule brought about a lot of controversy, which led to the price of STRK dropping. In the two days following its launch, the value of STRK experienced a significant decline, plummeting nearly 60% from its peak of $4.41 on February 20 to trading below $1.90.

However, following StarkWare’s recent announcement, STRK has surged to over $2, an increase of 6% in the past day, according to CoinGecko data.

According to Voyager data, eligible individuals have claimed over 440 million STRK, representing 95% of the total STRK currently available for distribution. Additionally, DefiLlama reports that Starknet’s total value locked has surged to nine figures for the first time, doubling in the past 24 hours to reach $127.72 million.