The proposal would need to be approved by the community of token holders.
StarkWare’s put forward a Starknet Improvement Proposal (SNIP) to introduce staking to the Ethereum Layer 2, said the firm’s CEO Eli Ben-Sasson.
If the starknet community approves the proposal, staking would be rolled out in stages, with the first requiring stakers to connect to Starknet, interact with staking contracts and follow the proposed protocol rules.
“With this proposal, Starknet is poised to become one of the first – or maybe even the first – major L2s to introduce staking. That means to make a serious tokenomics-based commitment to the network being operated and run by the community for the community,” read a statement shared with The Defiant.
According to the StarkWare team, the firm and the Starknet Foundation will rescind any staking rewards during the first stage of the rollout.
The move by StarkWare did not impact the price of the Starknet token today. The token has taken a beating with the rest of the market in recent weeks. STRK trades for $0.59, with a $770 million market cap.
Starknet total value locked (TVL) went near-vertical in the beginning of 2024. According to L2Beat, it shot up to $1.7 billion in March from $145 million in January. It has since shed more than half of its value, and currently boasts $694 million in TVL.
The $694 million figure places Starknet 9th among Layer 2s. Arbitrum and Base lead the sector with $15 billion and $6.6 billion respectively. Adding staking to its network might help propel Starknet into the higher ranked Layer 2 protocols, along with bucking the downtrend it has been experiencing since March.
StarkWare, the team that pioneered zero-knowledge-based rollups in 2018 and which has been key to scaling Ethereum through Starknet, has been explicitly ambitious with its moves of late.
In early June, the firm revealed plans to scale Bitcoin through the controversial OP_CAT upgrade, a Satoshi-era script that has now resurfaced. Ben-Sasson claimed he wanted to “seize the moment,” although the upgrade still needs to go through the rigorous Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) process.