Funds Unlocked: StarkWare Addresses Upgrade-Related Lockouts – Here’s What Happened

StarkWare, the development firm behind Ethereum scaling solution Starknet, has released funds that got locked up following a system upgrade last week.

In a post on social media platform X, StarkWare said a total of $550,000 worth of crypto held in accounts that had not been upgraded had become “temporarily inaccessible” after the upgrade.

That happened after all Starknet users earlier this year were asked to “perform an essential upgrade to their account.”

“As of today, the upgrade is reenabled, allowing users to immediately regain access to their accounts,” the StarkWare team wrote in the post.

Starknet had an important version update last week: 0.12.1. Several months ago, in preparation for this update, Starknet users were asked to perform an essential upgrade to their account.

When 0.12.1 went live, accounts that were not upgraded, became temporarily inaccessible.…

— StarkWare 🐺🐱 (@StarkWareLtd) August 30, 2023

The fact that accounts that had not been upgraded suddenly became inaccessible came as a surprise to many users, with some expressing their frustration with the whole case on X.

The lock-up is the “equivalent of having the money in your bank account disappear if you don’t get the latest software package,” wrote one user.

“Thank You For Flying With StarkWare Airlines,” the user added.

Others made fun of the whole incident, with one user ironically asking “Is that the zero in zero knowledge?”

Testnet launched in July

Back in July, Starknet launched the testnet for a major new upgrade called the Starknet Quantum Leap.

At the time, the testnet launch was the first step towards bringing the upgraded solution to the mainnet.

The upgrade has since the beginning been touted as key to boost transaction throughput on the network, and the team described the improved throughout as “unparalleled” in the Ethereum ecosystem.

According to a blog post at the time, the throughput “surged” from an average of 30,000 Cairo steps per second (CSPS) on the previous version, to 220,000 CSPS in Quantum Leap, representing close to a 10x increase.

The last upgrade necessary to complete the Starknet Quantum Leap launched on mainnet on August 21, with the team promoting the upgrade as infrastructure developers can use “to build amazing frontends!”

Starknet v0.12.1 is live on Mainnet

This concludes the Starknet Mainnet Quantum Leap!

We’ve got the infrastructure ready for you to build amazing frontends!🦾🦾

This version includes the following changes:
👉👈Mempool Validation
👉👈Inclusion of Failed Transactions
👉👈Keccak… pic.twitter.com/kj43fdL7Jb

— Starknet 🐺🐱 (@Starknet) August 21, 2023