Nethermind and airdrop hunters dropped millions, and Starknet’s STRK token collapsed

As Ethereum's layer-2 network Starnet's two-day token price has more than halved, Ethereum infrastructure firm Nethermind and Airdrop Farmers have dropped millions of dollars worth of airborne tokens.

The price of Starknet (STRK) has fallen nearly 60% and is trading under $1.90 from $4.41 on February 20, a windfall for some blockchain users, CoinGecko data shows.

STRK reached as high as $7.70 on Binance following the exchange's listing, but its price there fell 75.4% below $1.90.

“The price of $STRK has been declining since launch,” blockchain analysts wrote in a February 22 X post.

He added that Nethermind sold 3.41 million STRK, worth more than $6.7 million, and warned that “the sale may continue” as the company still holds more than $12 million worth of tokens.

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

# We noticed that Nethermind has sold a total of $3.41M STRK ($6.74M) at $1.98 so far. pic.twitter.com/RiFFiZXQRt

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 22, 2024

Hours ago, Lookonchain shared that it had discovered a second example of STRK's airdrop hunter strengthening wallets, where 1.2 million STRK worth $2.4 million were moved from 1,800 different wallets to a single address.

In the year On February 21, Lookonchain claimed to have found a similar example of an airdrop hunter, where nearly 1,400 wallets sent 1.4 million airdropped STRK worth about $3 million to a single address.

Another airdrop hunter received 1.22M $STRK($2.4M) with a purse of ~1.8K. pic.twitter.com/Xzh80FF5lH

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 21, 2024

Yearn.finance developer Banteg revealed that ahead of the Starknet airdrop, more than 700,000 wallets linked to 1.3 million GitHub accounts eligible for the STRK airdrop were controlled by airdrop hunters.

Related: Starknet's airdrop is largely successful despite controversies.

STRK's airdrops have been slammed by STRKnet users who claim they are ineligible for distribution despite thousands of dollars worth of transactions. Eligibility criteria required users to hold at least 0.005 Ether (ETH) – worth $10 – at the November 15, 2023 snapshot.

Two months after STRK's opening program to reward Starknet investors and contributors with 1.3 billion STRK, a 13% offering, it ran into trouble.

The STRK airdrop saw huge take-up when it started, with 45 million STRK tokens secured within the first hour and a half after starting the allocation.

So far, about 430 million STRK tokens — about 92% of the total available for distribution at a value of more than $790 million — have been claimed by eligible people, according to data from Voyager.

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

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