Starknet Token Holders Ratify Plan to Implement Staking, in Landmark Decentralized Election

Starknet token holders voted on Friday to implement staking on the layer-2 network, a proposal that’s been in the works since July, in a landmark governance election on Snapshot’s new decentralized Snapshot X platform.

The vote, which went live on Tuesday, passed with overwhelming support, but only 0.08% of eligible voters holding Starknet’s native token, STRK, participated. 98.94% voted in favor of implementing staking, while 0.45% abstained, and 0.61% voted against it.

The new mechanism on Starknet means that anyone holding more than 20,000 STRK will be able to stake on the network, from the fourth quarter of this year.

“A minting mechanism that strikes a balance between rewarding stakers and setting inflation expectations was also approved in the vote,” StarkWare, the main developer firm behind the Starknet blockchain, wrote in a press release shared with CoinDesk.

To power the governance process, Starknet is making use of Snapshot X, the governance protocol that the team behind Snapshot released Tuesday and its first on-chain feature.

“Snapshot X determines voting power based on the voters’ STRK holdings,” StarkWare wrote. “The goal is to ensure votes are coming from genuine community members, and to prevent people outside of the community from buying STRK today, voting, and then selling the day after. To achieve this, Snapshot X takes a snapshot of STRK holdings at predetermined time.”