Is the Short Team Lockup for STRK ‘Misaligned’? No, Says Starkware CEO

Starknet community members were not happy about many of the details of who was eligible to receive tokens.

Feb 16, 2024

Listen or watch all the new CoinDesk podcast episodes wherever you want.

ABOUT

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Starknet made news this week forannouncing what will be the largest initial airdrop by number of eligible addresses ever. But it faced heavy criticism online for many of the details of the airdrop, from the fact that Ethereum solo takers received almost 22% of the distribution to eligibility requirements that users held at least 0.005 ETH in their wallets as of Nov. 15, 2023, to the fact that the token generation event took place almost two years before the unlock date.

Starkware CEO Eli Ben-Sasson joined Unchained to respond to the multiple critiques of the airdrop and discuss why he and the Starknet Foundation decided on the details that they did.

Show highlights:

What the airdrop criteria was and why they decided to make it that way
Why they allocated so much $STRK to Ethereum solo stakers
Eli’s response to the criticism about how little Starknet network participants got in the airdrop
Why the STRK Token Generation Event (TGE) was done in 2022, only to be airdropped two years later
Why Eli believes that even if the unlock of tokens is in two months, it does not indicate a misalignment of incentives
Whether Eli will sell his tokens when they become unvested

Thank you to our sponsors! Popcorn Network | iTrustCapital | Polkadot

Guest |

Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of Starkware

Links |

Recent coverage of Unchained on airdrops: Jupiter Founder Meow to Critics of JUP Airdrop: ‘Give Me a Break’

Unchained:

Starknet’s Airdrop Plan Sparks Some Praise but Also Outrage

Starknet’s First Token Distribution Will Be Available to Nearly 1.3 Million Addresses

The Defiant:Starknet Faces Backlash Over Airdrop and Team Unlocks

Loomdart’s tweet on the TGE

Learn more:

Do You Have to Pay Taxes on a Crypto Airdrop?

What Is a Crypto Airdrop? A Beginner's Guide

Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.

HOST

Laura Shin

Laura Shin is a crypto journalist, host of the Unchained podcast, and author of “The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze” (Public Affairs, 2022). Formerly a senior editor at Forbes, she was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time, and her podcasts and videos have had more than 15 million downloads and views. Shin has spoken about cryptocurrency at places such as TEDx San Francisco, the International Monetary Fund, Singularity University and the Oslo Freedom Forum.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors from Stanford University and has a master of arts from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She lives in New York City.