The Starknet community has started voting on whether the project should become an independent Layer 1 blockchain, a move that would loosen its current ties to Ethereum. The poll runs on Snapshot until October 22 and is non-binding. It gives the team a green light to study the split, not a final order to leave.
STRK rose about 25% on the day the vote opened, according to the article. The token had already climbed 200% earlier in October before pulling back with the wider market. Trading has moved mostly to derivatives. Futures volume reached $894.84 million, nearly eight times the spot figure of $116.38 million. The market is also digesting an unlock of 127 million tokens for early investors.
Why Starknet is considering the split
The core argument is quantum security. Starknet says it could deploy quantum-resistant protections by 2027. Ethereum, in its current plan, would upgrade its own security closer to the end of 2029. Starknet is tightly tied to Ethereum today, so waiting for the main network could cost it roughly two years. Eli Ben-Sasson, the project’s head, has argued that advances in AI make the arrival of machines able to break modern encryption more likely, perhaps sooner than many expect.
At the same time, Starknet does not plan to change its tokenomics. STRK would remain the network’s only settlement asset, and bridges to Ethereum would keep working. That matters because a split would not cut all links. It would change who controls the security model.
The vote and the security trade-off
The Snapshot poll shows near-total support so far. The For option held 99.88% at the time of the report. Still, this is an early signal. The technical transition would need months of preparation and further votes.
The bigger risk is security. Starknet transactions currently rely on Ethereum’s authority and its large pool of staked validators. If Starknet goes independent, it must build its own protection system. That system would rest on the value and health of the STRK token. At the reported market cap of $580.24 million, STRK is far smaller than Ethereum. The team appears willing to accept that trade-off for a faster path to quantum resistance, but investors should treat the current vote as a first step, not a finished divorce.
