Starknet in October 2026: the rally rests on a proposal
Starknet (STRK) is the token of a rollup on Ethereum: transactions are bundled off the main chain and proven there with a zero-knowledge proof. The price stands at around 0.0848 US dollars on 16 October 2026. That is roughly four times the twelve-month low of 0.0222 US dollars from 18 August 2026 – and about 70 percent below the twelve-month high of 0.2781 US dollars from 20 November 2025.
What has changed in recent weeks
October moved the price a long way. STRK opened the month at 0.0431 US dollars, reached 0.1241 US dollars and closed at 0.0865 US dollars on 15 October. That leaves a gain of about 216 percent over 30 days and about 261 percent over 60 days. The trigger is not a finished product but a plan: on 8 October 2026 StarkWare said it was examining a move to an independent, quantum-resistant layer 1. A non-binding vote among STRK holders opened on 15 October and runs for seven days, until 22 October 2026.
Why this forecast is cautious
By the wording of the proposal itself the vote cannot approve a move; it asks for support for further research. At the same time about 127 million STRK unlocked on 15 October 2026, and further monthly tranches run until March 2027 according to the release schedules. Our scenarios therefore start from the opening price of the year, 0.0791 US dollars, not from the price after the jump – and the pessimistic path deliberately starts well below today's level.
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What is Starknet (STRK)?
Starknet is a rollup built on Ethereum. Transactions are not settled one by one on the main chain but executed in batches; what lands on Ethereum afterwards is a cryptographic proof that the batch was processed correctly. The network is developed by StarkWare, and its contracts are written in its own language, Cairo. The STRK token was listed on CoinMarketCap on 20 February 2024.
What the token is used for
STRK pays transaction fees on the network and is staked. About 7.59 billion STRK are in circulation out of a total of roughly 10.18 billion – so about a quarter of the total is not yet circulating. The token itself is issued as a contract on Ethereum, while the rollup runs above it as its own execution layer.
The Bitcoin business
Since the start of October 2026 Starknet has been courting Bitcoin holdings. On 2 October 2026 the project announced it would cover the bridge fees for the first 100 BTC moved onto the network via strkBTC – a token backed one-to-one by Bitcoin according to the project. On 8 October 2026 the lending application Vesu added weekly STRK rewards for users who borrow against Bitcoin collateral. Both are incentive programmes: they can attract holdings while they run, and say nothing about how much stays afterwards.
The proposal to leave Ethereum
On 8 October 2026 StarkWare said it was examining a move to an independent layer 1 designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers, naming 2027 as the horizon for full quantum resistance. A seven-day vote among STRK holders opened on 15 October 2026 with three options: support the research, oppose it, or remain neutral. The vote is non-binding and, by the wording of the proposal, cannot approve a move. According to the published details STRK would remain the network's token either way, and the existing bridges to Ethereum would stay open. No timetable for an actual move has been named.
The supply still to come
About 127 million STRK unlocked on 15 October 2026; according to the release schedules that is roughly 3.37 percent of the supply already released, split between early contributors and investors. Further monthly tranches run until March 2027. That is the quantity any surge in demand has to absorb.
Where STRK trades
On 16 October 2026, 36 centralised exchanges each reported more than one million US dollars of daily turnover in STRK, led by Binance at about 86.8 million, OKX at 58.9 million and Coinbase at 22.7 million US dollars. Decentralised venues accounted for about 8 percent of the counted volume. CoinMarketCap itself excluded 46 trading pairs from its count; they are not part of these figures. High daily turnover on a price that has more than tripled in 30 days is a sign of attention, not of valuation.
How Starknet differs from other rollups
Arbitrum works with a challenge procedure: withdrawals only become final after a dispute window. Starknet instead submits a proof that establishes correctness immediately. The same proof technology sits – in an earlier, application-specific form – behind Immutable X. That technical difference is exactly the argument in the quantum proposal: StarkWare considers its own proofs resilient and the link to Ethereum the vulnerable part.




