The highly anticipated Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution Starknet is gearing up for an airdrop that has reportedly attracted the interest of token farmers.
Scheduled for February 20th, the Starknet Foundation will distribute 700 million STRK tokens out of a total of 1.8 billion to 1.3 million eligible wallet addresses. Notably, 50% of these tokens are allocated to protocol users. However, a recent report by Yearn Finance developer banteg suggests that 1,854 individuals may have manipulated their accounts following a blockchain snapshot taken for the airdrop.
Banteg’s findings reveal that 1,175 out of the alleged 1,854 renamed accounts have identical historical GitHub IDs. Excluding these accounts from the airdrop snapshot would result in a significant reduction of 701,544 eligible wallets.
Addressing the situation, banteg stated, “Around half of the names are squatted, but squatters stand no chance. I will personally ensure you steal zero coins from the real devs.”
Airdrop hunters, individuals aiming to profit from farming tokens distributed through airdrops, often use scripts to consolidate multiple addresses into a few. Last March, it was reported that airdrop hunters consolidated $3.3 million worth of tokens from the Arbitrum (ARB) airdrop into just two wallets they controlled.
Starknet, launched in December 2022, currently boasts a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $55 million. Notably, the decentralized finance protocol Nostra contributes approximately 30% to the TVL volume.
Eligibility for the airdrop extends to Ethereum solo and liquid stakes, Starknet developers and users, as well as projects and developers outside the Web3 ecosystem. However, the airdrop is explicitly not available to be claimed by U.S. and U.K. persons or entities, and citizens of countries sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The situation highlights the increasing vigilance required in the crypto space to prevent potential exploitation of airdrop distributions.