Diego Oliva, who has led the Starknet team since March 2023, is stepping down and James Strudwick will take over as CEO. The company’s management changed during a period of difficulties that the Starknet ecosystem has been facing for a long time.
The New CEO
According to an official statement from the Starknet team, James Strudwick will now be the CEO. He joined the company in January 2024.
Starknet’s previous CEO Diego Oliva will remain with the company for a while longer to help smooth the transition. After announcing his resignation, Oliva wrote the following on his X account (formerly Twitter) : “I am extremely proud of all the progress and achievements we have been able to make together with the Starknet ecosystem builders and our partners.”
Starknet is a layer-2 (L2) network on Ethereum. It uses zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups based on STARK. According to Santiment, Starknet is in the top five L2 projects by developer activity over the past 30 days.
How is Starknet doing?
Overall, Starknet is currently facing challenges. As Starkscan data shows, the platform has seen a significant decline in user activity recently.
If on February 21 the number of active users exceeded 382 thousand, then by August 1 it had already dropped significantly. Now the number of people using Starknet is only about 13,177 people.
Additionally, the total value locked (TVL) on Starknet has dropped significantly since its peak in April, currently sitting at $231.7 million, according to DefiLlama.
Many attribute the decline in participation in the project’s ecosystem to user disappointment due to changes in the requirements for the STRK token airdrop in February.
About Starknet
Starknet is an Ethereum scaling solution that aims to improve the network’s performance and scalability. It is developed by Israeli company StarkWare Industries, which has attracted industry attention due to its high valuation of $8 billion and the investment of over $280 million.
STRK is a key element of the Starknet ecosystem, playing an important role in the functioning and management of the project. With the start of trading on major crypto exchanges, including Bybit, Binance and KuCoin, as well as an airdrop, STRK promises to become a sought-after asset.
