TL;DR
- STRK holders took part in the first-ever governance vote on mainnet.
- The vote took place September 10-13, 2024, and marked two important milestones in Starknet’s journey toward full decentralization:
- Community members participated in governance for the first time.
- The vote paved the way for the first stage of Starknet staking by proposing a minting curve for staking rewards.
- Governance on Starknet is now fully onchain and powered by the newly launched Snapshot X governance protocol, which leverages Herodotus Storage Proofs to ensure vote integrity.
Intro
For the first time since STRK was distributed to the community in February 2024, STRK holders participated in Starknet governance. This first community vote introduced the token-minting curve that enables staking rewards, paving the way for the first stage of Starknet staking.
The vote occurred between September 10 and 13, 2024, and anyone holding STRK could vote through the Starknet Governance Hub. Anyone who wishes to participate in future Starknet governance votes must delegate their voting power before the vote.
Including the Starknet community in governance marks a historic milestone in Starknet’s march toward full decentralization. And the best part? The vote ushered in the minting curve that enables staking.
What was not voted on?
What was not voted on is whether staking itself is coming to the network. That will happen regardless, as an important step toward transitioning Starknet to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network.
Starting in Q4, anyone with STRK in their wallet will be able to stake on Starknet. Such stakers will be rewarded for locking their tokens on Starknet to support the network. Those token rewards have to come from somewhere-and that’s where this first community vote on the minting curve comes into play.
The token-minting mechanism
Part of Starknet’s decentralization journey is to transition to a PoS protocol. In the future, stakers will be responsible for maintaining and securing the network by producing, attesting, and proving blocks. Anyone who holds STRK will be able to contribute to the network’s security and overall maintenance through staking and delegation. This transition to PoS will happen incrementally, to allow for the comprehensive testing and validation of features.
Starknet Improvement Proposal (SNIP) 18 introduced the first stage of staking in July, whereby any STRK holder will be able to stake on Starknet. To enable the proposal’s implementation, the community now voted on a minting curve that aims to encourage future participation in network maintenance and manage inflation.
In February, Prof. Noam Nisan, a scientific advisor at StarkWare and professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, proposed a curve that aims to do just that. The curve just voted on is based on Nisan’s, with a slight parameter variation. It operates according to the following principle: The more tokens staked, the lower the staking reward (to balance the need for stakers with the need to control inflation).
For more information on the details of the vote, check out “Staking on Starknet voting proposal” on the Starknet community forum.
Beyond the community participating in its first governance vote, there’s another development to note: Starting with this recent vote, Starknet governance votes take place entirely onchain.
Fully onchain voting ✅
The transition toward including the community in Starknet governance represents an important step toward full decentralization on the network. To ensure even the voting mechanism is decentralized, Starknet tapped Snapshot X—a dynamic new onchain governance protocol built on Starknet—to enable voting fully onchain.
Built by Snapshot, Snapshot X determines voting power based on the voters’ STRK holdings. The goal is to ensure votes come from genuine community members and to prevent people outside of the community from buying STRK today, voting, and then selling the day after. Snapshot X takes a snapshot of STRK holdings at a predetermined time to achieve this goal. Only people who hold STRK and have delegated their voting power before the snapshot date can vote.
To authenticate voting power based on STRK holdings at a specified snapshot date, Snapshot X uses Storage Proofs, developed by Herodotus. It also enables cross-chain voting—that is, users who hold STRK on Ethereum can also vote.
Snapshot X leverages Starknet and Storage Proofs to cryptographically enforce that the voting process is fair, transparent, and affordable—that means no double voting, no censoring, and a host of other protections.
The result is a fair and trustless voting mechanism that costs under 1K gas per vote. This is about 50x to 100x times cheaper than on Ethereum, meaning L1-standard security at a budget everyone can afford. On top of that, Snapshot X is the most flexible and modular voting protocol on the market.
How to vote
To participate in governance votes, you must hold STRK on L1 or vSTRK—wrapped STRK used specifically for governance votes—on Layer 2. The sum of the STRK you hold on L1 and the vSTRK you hold on L2 determines your total voting power. Storage Proofs are used behind the scenes to verify your holdings and calculate your voting power.
If you are voting with your own STRK, you must delegate your votes to your own address. If you would like to delegate your voting power to someone else, you may also do so. See “How to delegate voting power” on the Starknet Governance Hub for more information.
After you’ve delegated your votes, you can begin the voting process:
- Go to “Voting proposals” on the Starknet Governance Hub.
- Connect the crypto wallets that hold L1 STRK or vSTRK. If you have tokens in both L1 and L2 wallets, you will need to connect both wallets.
- Click the proposal you want to vote on (in this case, SNIP 18). You can only vote during an open voting window (in this case September 9-13, 2024).
- Read about the proposal, including the discussion.
- Cast your vote.
For more information on participating in governance voting, visit “How to vote” in the Starknet Governance Hub.
Conclusion
This first governance vote on mainnet vote kicks off a new era for Starknet, one in which members of the community both participate in major governance decisions and, soon, contribute to the network’s security and decentralization through staking. This important move toward full decentralization gives users a say in the direction of Starknet’s development, which is crucial in ensuring the network not only inherits Ethereum’s decentralization, but fosters its own.
If you hold STRK and want to participate in upcoming governance votes, visit the Starknet Governance Hub.
For updates on Starknet’s progress toward full decentralization, follow the Starknet Community Forum.
