Starknet (STRK) After a 68 Percent Rally: the October 15 Unlock Barely Registers

Starknet (STRK) trades at $0.0721 on Friday midday, 6.4 cents, and has gained 68.4 percent in seven days. On October 15, the next monthly tranche from StarkWare's unlock schedule comes free: 127 million STRK. At today's price that is $9.15 million, or 1.7 percent of the circulating supply. Measured against daily turnover of around $470 million, the tranche amounts to about two percent of a trading day, making it the smallest unlock we have calculated in this series so far.

The real question is therefore whether the date can lift or press the price at all. Anyone holding STRK or considering an entry has three things to settle: how large the tranche really is, how it relates to liquidity, and whether the layer 1 idea behind the rally has even been decided. All three can be checked with public figures, and that is where this article starts: you need no paid tracker for it, only the price, the circulating supply and the daily turnover of your venue.

What happens to STRK on October 15

StarkWare's unlock schedule provides for a tranche of 1.27 percent of the originally created supply on the 15th of each month. Total supply is 10 billion STRK, and 1.27 percent of that is exactly 127 million tokens. Under the published plan, the recipients are early contributors and investors, with the general public excluded. The series runs until March 15, 2027.

Vesting describes the stretching of a token allocation over time: the tokens already exist but are locked contractually or technically and are released in fixed steps. An unlock therefore creates no new tokens; it makes existing ones tradable for the first time. That sets it apart from inflation through mining or staking rewards, where total supply itself rises.

Circulating supply currently stands at 7.42 billion STRK. Around 2.58 billion tokens therefore remain locked, 25.8 percent of total supply. Of that remainder, six of the monthly tranches up to March 2027 account for 762 million STRK between them. Measured against today's circulating supply, that is 10.3 percent spread over half a year. Whatever is locked beyond that follows other deadlines and continues after this series ends.

The rally before the date: 68 percent in seven days

STRK has gained 24.6 percent in 24 hours, 68.4 percent in seven days and 126.8 percent in 30 days. Market value stands at $535 million, which corresponds to rank 112. What stands out is less the price than the turnover: at $470 million in a single day, almost the token's entire market value changes hands within 24 hours, around 88 percent. A reading like that signals short-term speculation and not calm reallocation.

The distance to the upside remains large despite the rally. The all-time high of $4.41 dates from February 20, 2024, shortly after the airdrop; the price today sits 98.4 percent below it. Seen from the other side, STRK has more than tripled from its low of $0.0222 on August 18 this year. Both numbers belong together if you want to place the current move: a gain of 68 percent off a low that is seven weeks old looks different from a gain of 68 percent off a yearly high.

StarkWare's revised unlock schedule: 1.27 percent a month

The plan in force today is not the first one. Under the original version, around 1.3 billion tokens would have come free in one go on April 15, 2024, roughly 13 percent of total supply. After criticism from the community, StarkWare revised the plan in February 2024 and split it into two phases, as Decrypt reported at the time: first 0.64 percent or 64 million tokens a month until March 15, 2025, then 1.27 percent or 127 million tokens a month for the following 24 months.

One thing about that matters above all: the date on October 15 is the 20th step in a series that has been running for two and a half years, at a rate unchanged since March 2025. A price reacting to a figure known since February 2024 is not reacting to news. Which is exactly why the order of magnitude rewards a look more than the date does.

Unlock against daily turnover: $9.15 million meets $470 million

The token count on its own says nothing. 127 million tokens sound like a lot, yet they only become selling pressure once the market cannot absorb them. The measure for that is the ratio of the tranche's dollar value to daily turnover. With STRK, $9.15 million stands against $470 million of turnover, which is 1.95 percent. On the arithmetic, the entire tranche equals about 28 minutes of normal trading.

That calculation deliberately assumes the worst case, namely that every unlocked token is sold on the first day. In practice that rarely happens, because allocations to contributors and investors are often held on or run down over weeks. As an upper bound the figure still serves, and an upper bound of two percent of a trading day is simply not an issue with STRK. Anyone treating selling pressure as the main risk here looks past the actual risk: it lies in turnover almost as high as the entire market value, and in a justification for the rally that has no decision behind it yet. Daily turnover never spreads evenly across all venues, and what counts is the turnover where you trade yourself.

Working out the token count yourself: how to proceed

You need three values, and all three appear on every larger price page: the current price, the circulating supply and turnover over the past 24 hours. Add to that the unlock rate from the project's published plan. The calculation runs to two lines.

1. Dollar value of the tranche: token count times price. With STRK that is 127,000,000 times $0.0721, or $9.15 million.
2. Ratio to liquidity: dollar value divided by daily turnover. $9.15 million divided by $470 million gives 1.95 percent.
3. Ratio to the holding: token count divided by circulating supply. 127 million divided by 7.42 billion gives 1.7 percent.

As a rule of thumb from the cases we have calculated in this series: below roughly ten percent of a daily turnover, an unlock sits in the noise. Above a whole daily turnover it becomes a topic in its own right, and from several daily turnovers upward it governs the price action around the date. STRK sits at the very bottom of that scale with just under two percent. A tool that puts circulating supply and unlock dates next to the price helps here; which ones do that job is covered in the comparison of analytics platforms.

Diverging token counts for the same date: where the gap comes from

Anyone researching this date runs into different figures. There is a comprehensible reason for that: some services calculate the percentage on the total supply of 10 billion, others on the circulating supply of 7.42 billion, and others again combine several deadlines in a month into one line. The same rate thus produces three different token counts, without any of the services calculating wrongly.

So the same short test applies to every unlock figure you read somewhere: divide the token count by the total supply and see whether a round percentage comes out that appears in the project's plan. With 127 million and 10 billion it is a clean 1.27 percent, and that rate appears in the revised version from February 2024. If something else comes out for you, the service is calculating on a different base or counting something in that does not belong to this tranche. The rate from the project's plan is more reliable than the token count on an overview page.

Eli Ben-Sasson's layer 1 push: quantum resistance targeted for 2027

The occasion for the rally comes from a consideration by StarkWare chief Eli Ben-Sasson rather than from the unlock date. He has floated converting Starknet from a layer 2 on Ethereum into a chain of its own. A layer 2 is a second layer that bundles transactions off the main chain and anchors the result there; with that it also takes on the main chain's security assumptions and its timetable. A layer 1 is an independent chain with its own validator set that sets its own rules.

Ben-Sasson's reasoning, as Bankless relays it, aims at cryptography: advances in quantum computers and AI could undermine today's security assumptions, and as a chain of its own Starknet could carry out cryptographic changes whenever it judged them necessary, instead of waiting on Ethereum's roadmap. He names quantum resistance by 2027 as the target; on what has been communicated so far, Ethereum is working towards 2029. Where Ethereum itself stands is covered in our Ethereum analysis.

From layer 2 to its own chain: validators, security and open questions

None of this has been decided. On the publicly documented state of affairs, this is a consideration the company says it is examining; a formal governance proposal and a vote are absent, and the route there is open too. Anyone justifying the rally with a completed switch is justifying it with something that does not yet exist.

Technically the step would be substantial. A chain of its own needs its own validator set, its own incentive structure for those validators and its own security base; the borrowed security of the main chain would fall away. At the same time, dependence on that chain's timetable disappears. Whether the trade is worth it is a judgement call and no calculation, and it will not be settled in a day. For the coming months that means the price is running on an expectation whose fulfilment hangs on a decision still outstanding, and whose implementation would then take years.

You can watch this at two places, both of them public: the project's governance forum, where a genuine proposal would surface first, and the company's technical publications. As long as nothing appears there, the idea remains a statement by the person who made it, and it belongs in every assessment of the price as exactly that.

The counter-check: the same measure at CARV, deBridge and Allora

How small the STRK tranche is shows up in a comparison with the cases we have calculated in recent days. At CARV, 38.8 million tokens met a daily turnover of $1.3 million on October 10, on our calculation of October 4. At deBridge, the 618 million DBR of October 17 corresponded to around ten trading days of turnover and 10.4 percent of circulating supply, on our calculation of October 5. And at Allora, 160.2 million ALLO come free on November 11, on our calculation of October 8 some 62.8 percent of the circulating supply at the time.

Against those three, STRK stands at 1.7 percent of circulating supply and two percent of a daily turnover. The same type of date, the same measure, results a factor of thirty apart. That is how you can see why a token count in a headline is of no use: 127 million is a bigger number than 38.8 million, and the smaller number is still the heavier case.

The holding period under section 23 EStG and the unlock date: the position for German holders

For tax purposes, a project's unlock date has nothing to do with your own holding. What governs is when you bought. Under current law, gains from the sale of crypto assets are tax free as a private disposal transaction under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act if more than a year lies between purchase and sale. Sell within the year and your personal income tax rate applies, and the allowance for all private disposal transactions in a year sits at 1,000 euros. Once it is exceeded, the whole gain is taxable, and the part above the threshold is not treated separately.

In practice, with a rally like this one: a sale after seven days of price gains falls almost always inside the one-year period and is therefore taxable, while a holding from the summer of 2025 has the period behind it already. Whether the holding period stays as it is remains open, however. The Bundestag rejected its abolition on October 9 by 445 votes to 132; we wrote up the situation and the further steps in our article on the Bundestag vote. For you, that means only one thing: keep your purchase and sale data in a form you can document later, whatever rule ends up applying.

Part of that is the question of whether your venue lists STRK at all and under whose supervision it operates. Since the European MiCA regulation took effect, providers targeting customers in the European Economic Area need an authorisation; which exchanges can show one, we have put together in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges. Check that with the provider itself before a purchase, because trading pairs and authorisations change.

Starknet: the unlock weighs two percent of a trading day

With STRK, the date on October 15 is the quietest quantity in the whole picture. What moves the price is an idea without a decision and a turnover that churns almost the entire market value. Three steps follow from that:

1. Calculate the tranche against liquidity before you fear a date. Price times token count, divided by daily turnover. Which tools put circulating supply and dates next to the price is covered in the comparison of analytics platforms.
2. Separate the justification from the decision. The layer 1 consideration is a statement by the StarkWare chief, with no governance decision behind it. Where you can trade STRK and at which fees is shown by the comparison of crypto exchanges.
3. Keep your purchase data documented. In a rally, the one-year period decides the tax burden. Suitable tools for that are in the comparison of tax tools and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)