Although STRK has not been officially launched, the Starknet community has shown overwhelming support for the upgrade, which aims to introduce the native cryptocurrency as a gas token.
Starknet has 99.8% of participating delegates voting to implement alpha version 0.13.0 on the mainnet, and no member of the Starknet Governance Committee has opposed this proposal. This update aims to enable a dual-token system that will allow users of the Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) network to settle gas fees with Ether (ETH) or STRK.
Following the tremendous results, the L2 protocol will activate v.13 on January 10th. However, users will not be able to use STRK to pay for transactions immediately as the native token remains unreleased.
The dual fee structure is only half of the update proposed by Stargent. Alpha v.13 also reduces gas costs by up to 50% and optimizes network performance through technology improvements.
Starknet extends Ethereum’s blockchain using a roll-up solution built on zero knowledge to deliver lower fees and faster transactions. Currently, sending ETH and exchanging it for other ERC-20 tokens via STRK’s decentralized network costs less than $1.
To achieve this, the protocol bundles transactions in an off-chain layer before broadcasting the same on-chain operations on Ethereum’s main chain.
The Ethereum scaling network, launched in February 2022 by Israel-based blockchain company StarkWare Industries, plans to distribute 1.8 billion STRK tokens as user rewards, with at least 50 million tokens earmarked for early adopters.
There is speculation about a general community airdrop for network participants and users.