StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said the shift to a “more gradual” STRK token release schedule came after listening to concerns from the community about the team’s long-term alignment with the Starknet ecosystem.

Starknet developer StarkWare has changed its token unlock schedule after backlash from the crypto community over its original plan to release a large number of tokens airdropped to early contributors and investors in just two months.

While the controversial initial token release schedule would unlock 1.3 billion STRK tokens on April. 15, StarkWare now plans to make the planned release “more gradual” with smaller drops spread out over a three-year period. 

As per the revised schedule, 64 million tokens will unlock on April. 15, and the same amount will be unlocked monthly until March. 25, 2025. After this date, STRK will be released monthly in installments of 127 million tokens for the next 24 months until March. 15, 2027. 

The new plan means that 580 million tokens held by early contributors and investors will be unlocked by the end of 2024, as opposed to 2 billion of those tokens under the previous schedule.

We
1. listened to concerns re. long-term alignment of @StarkWareLtd w/ Starknet ecosystem.
2. proposed a more gradual release schedule
3. believe trust is earned with actions, not just words
4. thank investors for their support on this@StarkWareLtd ❤️ @Starknet https://t.co/WZsiZsn3yM

— Eli Ben-Sasson (@EliBenSasson) February 22, 2024

StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said the proposed changes were implemented after taking on board community feedback. In an interview with Unchained earlier this month, Ben-Sasson said he did not believe the token unlock in two-months was indicative of misaligned incentives. He also did not definitively say whether or not the team would sell their tokens when they had been unlocked. 

 “You don’t see many teams these days listen to feedback and subsequently move billions of dollars in emissions schedules,” said Jonathan Wu, head of growth at Aztec Network on X.

However, not everyone was pleased with the revised token unlock schedule, and some users called for the team to go further, and address what they claim was an unfair distribution of STRK tokens during the first phase of the airdrop.

Despite the controversy surrounding the Feb. 20 airdrop, which saw over 700 million STRK distributed to nearly 1.3 million eligible addresses, it was largely a success with over 94% of the tokens claimed, according to data from Voyager.

Starknet’s total value locked (TVL) has also seen a significant uptick over the last few days, surging to $122 million, with the majority of value coming from zkLend, Nostra and Ekubo after the Starknet Foundation announced a 40 million STRK distribution to select decentralized finance protocols.