Starknet’s STRK token drops as Nethermind and airdrop hunters dump millions

STRK’s token has fallen by over half since its launch two days ago, as millions of the tokens are sold by airdrop hunters and large token recipients.

The two-day-old token for the Ethereum layer-2 network Starknet has more than halved in price as Ethereum infrastructure firm Nethermind and airdrop farmers dumped millions worth of the airdropped token.

Starknet’s (STRK) price has dropped nearly 60% and is trading under $1.90 from a Feb. 20 top of $4.41 — when it was airdropped to some of the blockchain’s users, per CoinGecko data.

STRK hit as high as $7.70 on Binance following its listing on the exchange, but its price there has since dropped below $1.90 — a 75.4% fall.

“The price of $STRK has been falling since its launch,” blockchain analysts Lookonchain wrote in a Feb. 22 X post.

It added it found Nethermind sold 3.41 million STRK worth over $6.7 million and warned “the selling may continue” as the firm still held over $12 million worth of the token.

The price of $STRK has been falling since its launch.

We noticed that #Nethermind has sold a total of 3.41M $STRK($6.74M) at $1.98 so far.#Nethermind still holds 6.74M $STRK($12.33M), and the selling may continue.https://t.co/EUvVeHvyCY pic.twitter.com/RiFFiZXQRt

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 22, 2024

Hours earlier, Lookonchain shared that it had found a second instance of a STRK airdrop hunter consolidating wallets, picking up 1.2 million STRK worth $2.4 million moving from around 1,800 separate wallets to a single address.

On Feb. 21, Lookonchain shared it found a similar instance of an airdrop hunter, with nearly 1,400 wallets sending 1.4 million airdropped STRK worth about $3 million to a single address.

Another airdrop hunter also received 1.22M $STRK($2.4M) via ~1.8K wallets.https://t.co/MCkUjWGFijhttps://t.co/LMR3FIDCGJ pic.twitter.com/Xzh80FF5lH

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 21, 2024

Yearn.finance developer Banteg had alleged ahead of Starknet’s airdrop that over 700,000 wallets of the 1.3 million eligible for airdropped STRK were linked to GitHub accounts controlled by airdrop hunters.

Related: Starknet airdrop largely successful despite controversies

The STRK airdrop was also dampened by Starknet users claiming they were ineligible for the distributions despite making thousands of dollars worth of transactions as criteria denoted they needed to have held at least 0.005 Ether (ETH) — worth about $10 — at the time of a snapshot on Nov. 15, 2023.

Others took issue with STRK’s unlock schedule for rewarding Starknet investors and contributors with 1.3 billion STRK, 13% of the supply, around two months after launch.

STRK’s airdrop saw a huge takeup when it launched, with 45 million STRK tokens secured in the first hour and a half after it started allocations.

So far, nearly 430 million STRK tokens — around 92% of the total available for distribution worth over $790 million — have been claimed by those eligible, according to data from Voyager.

Despite STRK’s price drop, Starknet’s total value locked is $73.5 million — a nearly 30% jump in 24 hours, according to DefiLlama.