Starknet Ecosystem Analysis

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Key Insights

  • Starknet’s TVL rose 550% YTD to $252 million, mainly driven by the public launch of the STRK token on mainnet in February 2024.
  • The Starknet Foundation promotes ecosystem growth through key initiatives like DeFi Spring, the Propulsion Pilot Program, Starknet Catalyst, and various grant programs.
  • TVL in STRK terms grew by over 100% QoQ to $571 million in Q3 2024, boosted by DeFi Spring 2.0, which will continue distributing STRK rewards through December 2024.
  • The upcoming mainnet launch of STRK staking in December 2024 is set to boost ecosystem growth by driving DeFi participation and increasing community participation in network governance and security.
  • Starknet will integrate Kakarot EVM by Q4 2024, enabling Solidity-based applications to run on the network and attracting more developers to its ecosystem.

Primer

Starknet is an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) scaling solution launched by StarkWare in November 2021. Unlike traditional EVM-based L2s, Starknet is built around the Cairo Virtual Machine (Cairo VM), pioneering Ethereum’s alternative virtual machine (altVM) expansion. Cairo VM is optimized explicitly for zero-knowledge proofs (zk-proofs), which form the backbone of Starknet’s ZK-rollup architecture, enabling the rollup to process transactions offchain while submitting zk-STARK proofs to Ethereum.

With altVMs on the rise, Starknet aims to differentiate itself with a zk-rollup solution. Starknet’s ZK-rollup allows developers to create computationally complex smart contracts that can be efficiently proven and verified onchain. The network’s architecture features sequencers that order transactions and provers that generate zk-STARK proofs for validation on Ethereum. This design supports high transaction throughput and improved efficiency, making Starknet attractive for high-performance applications such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming.

Additionally, Starknet is one of few L2s that natively support account abstraction, providing an improved user experience for developers and users. Account abstraction simplifies user interactions by allowing customizable wallet logic, such as social recovery, enhancing the user experience and enabling more flexible application designs. Since its mainnet launch, network upgrades, such as parallel execution and block packing, have focused on enhancing performance, lowering transaction costs, and increasing throughput.

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Ecosystem Performance Analysis

Starknet’s ecosystem comprises over 80 applications, mainly across DeFi, Gaming, Infrastructure, and Tooling.

Source: Starknet Digger

DeFi

Starknet’s DeFi sector encompasses key categories, such as lending and borrowing (money market) DEXs, liquid staking, stablecoins, yield generation, and aggregation protocols.

DeFi TVL(USD) rose 550% YTD to $252 million, mainly driven by the launch of the STRK token on Starknet’s mainnet in February 2024. TVL(USD) peaked in Q2’24 at $330 million before experiencing a slight decline in Q3’24 (5%) in line with the broader market correction. However, DeFi TVL in STRK terms increased by over 100% QoQ to 571 million in Q3’24. This surge was

driven by the reinforcement of the DeFi Spring program 2.0 in July 2024, which will distribute STRK rewards to ecosystem participants through December 2024.

DeFi Diversity measures the number of protocols that account for the top 90% of total value locked (TVL) in the ecosystem. A more even distribution of TVL across multiple protocols helps mitigate the risk of systemic failure from events like hacks or migrations. As of Q3’24, Starknet’s DeFi TVL spans four protocols, increasing its diversity score from 3 in Q2’24 to 4. These top protocols by TVL include Nostra, Ekubo, zkLend, and Nimbora, which are fully covered in later sections of this report.

Starknet’s native token (STRK) initially launched on Ethereum in November 2022 but wasn’t publicly available until the Starknet Foundation’s Provisions Program in February 2024. The program distributed 700 million STRK from an initial 1.8 billion STRK allocation reserved for the community to around 1.3 million eligible airdrop addresses. Recipients were required to claim their tokens within an 8-month window.

DeFi Spring

To boost economic activity on Starknet, the Foundation launched DeFi Spring, a two-phase program funded with 90 million STRK and overseen by the DeFi Committee.

Phase One launched in February 2024 and distributed 40 million STRK to participating protocols biweekly over eight months, concluding in October 2024. Protocols were rewarded based on network activity, compliance, and performance and required to fully distribute the accrued rewards to users through individual incentive programs. Following the launch of STRK and DeFi Spring 1.0, Starknet’s TVL surged by over 300% QoQ to $123 million in Q1’24, peaking at $330 million in Q2’24.

DeFi Spring 2.0 began in October 2024, shortly after Phase One, and allocated an additional 50 million STRK to liquidity providers on participating protocols. Phase two will distribute rewards through December 2024. The program’s goal is to encourage liquidity provider participation in these protocols, augmenting yield.

As of Q3’24, the Starknet Foundation has distributed roughly 38 million STRK through the DeFi Spring program, with Nostra users receiving over 65% of the rewards YTD.

Nostra

Nostra is a multi-purpose money market protocol on Starknet, developed by Tempus Labs, that offers lending, borrowing, swapping, bridging, and liquid staking services to users from a single interface. Nostra also offers a fiat-backed stablecoin, UNO, allowing users to access additional USD liquidity on Starknet.

The following select Nostra liquidity pools distribute DeFi Spring STRK rewards based on users’ activity and non-recursive lending supply:

A user’s non-recursive supply is the total amount of tokens a user has lent minus the tokens they borrowed based on a predetermined recursive group of correlated assets. In Nostra’s case, these assets include USDT, USDC, DAI, UNO (counted as a single asset), STRK, and ETH. The formula used to determine a user’s non-recursive supply is as follows:

  • Non-recursive supply = max(0, lending supply – borrowing supply)

This ensures that only net-lending contributions are counted for rewards, incentivizing genuine liquidity provision. For example, if a user deposits 100 ETH and borrows 50 ETH, their non-recursive supply would be 50 ETH. If the borrowing exceeds the lending, the non-recursive supply becomes zero.

Year to date, Lending has remained the top DeFi category, overtaking Dexes from Q4’23. Nostra’s dominance as the leading lending protocol remains a major driver of lending’s market share, propelling it above other categories for three consecutive quarters. Despite Lending’s continued dominance, Dexes posted more substantial growth in Q3’24 with a 51.45% QoQ increase in TVL to $108.02 million, reflecting a rising trend in DEX trading activities on Starknet.

Yield protocols were standout performers, with a 142.10% QoQ increase in Q3’24, signaling a sharp rise in demand for yield-generating opportunities. The Yield sector, which only began emerging in Q2 2024, has quickly gained traction, driven by lucrative farming strategies and higher returns. In contrast, Liquid Staking faced a 25.82% QoQ drop in TVL as it struggled to compete with the higher returns offered by other protocols. This decline indicates a broader shift in user preference toward high-yield opportunities, though Lending remains a core driver of DeFi economic activity on Starknet.

Lending

As of Q3’24, the lending market on Starknet is concentrated across four protocols: Nostra, zkLend, Vesu, and Hashstack.

zkLend

zkLend is a permissionless lending protocol on Starknet that offers users a secure and efficient money-market platform for addressing their liquidity needs. The protocol allows users to deposit supported assets, earn interest, and borrow against collateral.

As one of the lending protocols participating in Starknet’s DeFi Spring program:

  • zkLend launched an incentive program in March 2024.
  • The program distributes accrued STRK rewards to users who supplied or borrowed assets from eligible pools on zkLend.
  • The APR is dynamically adjusted daily and is based on a user’s non-recursive supply (NRS) for the previous day.

Vesu

Vesu is the newest entrant to Starknet’s Lending sector, having launched in Q3 2024. Vesu is a permissionless lending protocol that aims to address limitations in existing lending protocols by eliminating governance overhead. Vesu’s standout feature is its modular lending pool design, where users can create permissionless pools with isolated liquidity and risk. This enables better capital efficiency while ensuring that risks are contained within individual pools rather than spreading across the entire protocol.

Vesu also supports Lending Hooks, inspired by Uniswap v4, which allows developers to build customized lending experiences and deploy unique features within the protocol.

As a participating protocol in Starknet’s DeFi Spring program:

  • Vesu awards users supplying liquidity to select asset markets, including STRK, ETH, USDC, and USDT.
  • Participants can earn rewards by depositing or borrowing these assets, with APRs ranging from 12-15%.
  • Rewards are distributed biweekly, allowing users to steadily accumulate STRK tokens as they engage with the protocol.

Hashstack

Hashstack is a zk-native, permissionless lending protocol built on Starknet that enables users to access undercollateralized loans. Launched in August 2022, Hashstack migrated from EVM-based chains to Starknet in a strategic shift aimed at leveraging zk-rollup technology to improve scalability, lower transaction costs, and offer more efficient lending solutions. The protocol’s focus is on making DeFi more capital-efficient by allowing users to borrow up to five

times their collateral. This means that with only $100 in collateral, a user can borrow up to $500, significantly increasing liquidity access.

Hashstack is one of the participating programs in the DeFi Spring Program:

  • The protocol distributes accrued STRK token rewards to liquidity providers and borrowers.
  • Participants earn rewards by supplying or borrowing USDC, USDT, ETH, or STRK.
  • The rewards are split 70% to liquidity providers and 30% to borrowers, but only borrowers who spent their debt qualified. The first claim occurred on March 28, 2024, with rewards distributed biweekly.

In Q3 2024, Nostra strengthened its lead in Starknet’s lending market, growing its market share to 75.6% YTD, partly due to securing 65% of DeFi Spring rewards and its token launch. Notably, Nostra’s TVL dominance peaked in Q2’24, aligning with the launch of its governance token, NSTR, in mid-June 2024.

zkLend saw its share drop 20% QoQ to 16.8%, while Vesu, after launching in Q3, captured 7.3% of the total TVL, signaling strong early growth. Hashstack remained at 0.3%, slightly down from 0.5% in Q2’24, as it continues to provide niche lending offerings. Overall, DeFi Spring incentives played a critical role in reshaping the sector’s market share, as Nostra retains the top spot for the second consecutive quarter.

DEXs

As of Q3’24, the DEX category is concentrated across two protocols, Ekubo and Nostra Pools, which collectively account for over 90% of Starknet’s average DEX volume.

Ekubo

Ekubo is an automated market maker (AMM) that aims to offer the best execution for traders and high returns for liquidity providers. The DEX launched in August 2023 on Starknet as a native AMM. It uses a “till” pattern and a single contract to manage all liquidity pools, which

reduces transaction costs by deferring token transfers until the end of a trade. Liquidity providers can also concentrate their assets within specific price ranges, improving capital efficiency and offering better pricing for traders.

Ekubo also supports custom pools through its permissionless extension feature, allowing developers to add new functions like oracles or order types such as limit orders and TWAMM orders. Additionally, the protocol applies a withdrawal fee from the liquidity provider’s principal, encouraging active liquidity management and efficient capital allocation.

As a participating protocol in DeFi Spring, Ekubo’s distribution strategy is as follows:

  • Liquidity providers (LPs) for a specific pair earn incentives based on their share of the Market Depth Score (MDS). MDS is calculated from a position’s contribution to market depth near the current pool price.
    • The MDS uses the pair’s 1-day realized volatility to measure market depth within multiple ranges (e.g., 0.25x, 0.5x, 1x, 2x volatility). Positions closer to the current price, determined by the pair’s volatility, earn more rewards.
    • The pool’s fee is factored into the MDS by excluding liquidity within +/- 4x of the current price.
  • Larger positions receive a larger share of total incentives.
  • Closeness to the current price enhances rewards, with volatility affecting what counts as “close.”
  • Pools with higher fees receive a smaller share of incentives.
  • No action is required to participate; rewards are computed offchain and can be claimed at the end of each period if the position is active.

Nostra Pools

Nostra Pools is Nostra’s decentralized exchange (DEX) offering that aims to offer low-slippage trading for a wide range of assets. To do so, the automated market maker AMM) leverages constant product and StableSwap algorithms.

Nostra Pools integrates with other Nostra offerings, such as its lending and borrowing solutions, allowing users to amplify their returns. For example, LPs can deploy yield-bearing tokens from Nostra’s lending markets into liquidity pools, earning additional yield on top of the supply APY from the lending protocol. This structure deepens liquidity and capital efficiency within Nostra’s multi-purpose DeFi application.

As of Q3’24, Ekubo dominates Starknet’s DEX category, accounting for over 80% of the average monthly DEX volume. Despite experiencing a 6.2% QoQ decline, Ekubo’s efficient liquidity structure and optimized trade execution allow it to retain its market share. Meanwhile, Nostra Pools has gained momentum, particularly since the launch of its governance token in Q2’24. This likely drove trading activity to the protocol, contributing to a 100% QoQ increase in DEX volume of $2.5 million by Q3’24. Together, both protocols account for over 95% of Starknet’s DEX volume as of Q3’24, with other competitors like SithSwap and 10KSwap seeing sharp declines in both volume and TVL.

Yield Aggregators

Nimbora

Nimbora is the largest yield aggregator on Starknet by TVL, accounting for over 85% of the category’s market share. Developed by Space Shard, the yield aggregator launched in Alpha in October 2023 with the goal of providing cost-efficient yield strategies on Starknet. Some notable yield strategies offered by the protocol include:

  • nsDAI strategy: Users deposit DAI into the protocol’s sDAI vaults to mint nsDAI, a yield-bearing token that accrues yield from Maker Protocol fees derived from DAI borrowing and treasury earnings.
  • sSTRK strategy: Users deposit STRK into the protocol’s sSTRK vault to mint sSTRK. This yield-bearing token accrues 2x Nimbora points and can be staked, restaked, and/or borrowed against other Nimbora yield-bearing tokens.
  • nstUSD strategy: Users deposit USDC into the protocol’s nstUSD vault to mint nstUSD, which generates yields through RWAs and DeFi assets in Angle Protocol’s reserves.

In February 2024, Space Shard released the Nimbora SDK, a development toolkit designed to enable seamless integration with Nimbora’s YieldDex aggregator. The SDK is optimized to improve the developer and user experience while minimizing gas fees.

As a participant in Starknet’s DeFi Spring program, Nimbora distributed rewards to users engaging with select incentivized pools, offering various yield and liquid staking strategies. For example, Nimbora integrated with Liquity, where users earned STRK rewards through Liquity Troves, with incentivized pools offering an APR of approximately 48.39%, distributed bi-weekly

In May 2024, Nimbora V2 was launched, offering users simplified, 1-click yield strategies on Starknert. In September 2024, exactly a year after its Alpha version was released, Nimbora officially launched public access.

STRKFarm

StarkFarm is a yield aggregator on Starknet that focuses on providing efficient yield farming strategies. It offers two main strategies:

  • Auto-Compounding Strategy: Users can stake STRK, USDC, or zkLend tokens (zSTRK and zUSDC) in Starkfarm pools to receive frmzSTRK or frmzUSDC tokens, which represent their share in the pool. This strategy automatically collects DeFi Spring STRK rewards every seven days and reinvests them to enhance returns. For STRK, rewards are reinvested into the zkLend STRK pool, while for USDC, STRK rewards are swapped for USDC and reinvested into the zkLend USDC pool, compounding yields over time.
  • Sensei-Delta Neutral Lending: This strategy allows users to deposit STRK, USDC, or ETH to create a delta-neutral position by looping funds between zkLend and Nostra. It maximizes yield while maintaining balanced risk through automatic rebalancing. Depositors receive an NFT representing their stake, which can be redeemed for STRK, USDC, or ETH. The strategy periodically adjusts to maintain a healthy risk profile and compensates for high borrow APRs with STRK rewards.

Bountive

Bountive is a decentralized, non-custodial prize savings protocol on Starknet designed to offer users risk-free participation in no-loss prize games. Inspired by traditional prize-linked savings accounts, Bountive allows users to enter games without the risk of losing their initial deposits. By combining simplicity, user-friendliness, and a no-loss mechanism, Bountive provides a low-risk, engaging platform for users to increase their savings while potentially winning rewards.

In Q2’24, Bountive, the initial category leader, lost its position to Nimbora, which has since dominated the category for two consecutive quarters. Nimbora’s average TVL surged from $1.41 million in Q2 to $8.8 million in Q3’24, solidifying its dominance. Meanwhile, StarkFarm emerged in Q3 with a modest share, capturing an average TVL of $400,000. Bountive, on the other hand, saw its TVL decline significantly to $13,331 by Q3. Overall, Nimbora’s sharp growth has driven most of the YTD yield TVL increase, with StarkFarm’s entrance marking a new competitor in this category.

Stablecoins

Starknet’s stablecoin market cap demonstrated significant growth in 2024, reaching $97.9M by Q3’24, marking a 64.1% QoQ increase. This growth follows a substantial surge in liquidity in Q1’24, driven by the STRK token launch and the DeFi Spring campaign. Additionally, the stablecoin supply on Starknet is dominated by USDC and USDT (Tether), which collectively account for over 98% of liquidity, with USDC alone leading with a 71% market share.

Liquid Staking

Starknets liquid staking TVL peaked in Q1’24 at $26 million but has since plummeted to $1.4 million as of Q3’24 end, a ~94.6% drop from all-time high. This TVL is entirely composed of nstSTRK, Nostra’s liquid staking token, which launched in March 2024. Through Nostra’s liquid staking product, users can stake their STRK tokens and receive nstSTRK in return, retaining liquidity while accumulating points. Eventually, nstSTRk holders will also accrue future staking rewards once Starknet’s planned staking mechanism goes live on Mainnet in Q4’24. As of Q3’24 end, nstSTRK’s total supply stands at ~3 million, less than 0.1% of STRK’s total token supply. The steep drop in liquid staking TVL suggests reduced participation over the year, likely due to the absence of active staking rewards or incentives. Nonetheless, Starknet’s planned staking on mainnet could re-stimulate interest as more rewards become available to token holders.

Other DeFi Protocols

  • Carmine Finance (Options): A protocol that enables options trading through an Automated Market Maker (AMM). Carmine Finance supports European-style options, allowing users to hedge or speculate. Key features include options buying and selling, dynamic liquidity pools, and integration with other DeFi protocols for use cases like impermanent loss hedging.
  • Opus (CDP): A decentralized credit protocol that allows users to borrow CASH, an overcollateralized USD-pegged stablecoin, against a portfolio of curated collateral, including yield-bearing assets. The protocol dynamically adjusts loan-to-value ratios, interest rates, and liquidation thresholds based on each user’s collateral, optimizing borrowing efficiency. Opus ensures CASH’s price stability by adjusting interest rates and applying minting fees when the stablecoin deviates from its USD peg. Liquidation is managed via the Absorber, where users can supply CASH to receive rewards in liquidated assets and protocol fees.

Infrastructure

Bridges

Bridge inflows on Starknet have historically been dominated by StarkGate, followed by Orbiter and Layerswap. Starknet’s native bridge, Starkgate, facilitates seamless asset transfers between Ethereum and Starknet, making it the primary choice for users. Orbiter is a multichain alternative that mainly offers low-cost cross-rollup. Layerswap, on the other hand, focuses on simplifying asset movement from centralized exchanges to L2s, targeting a more retail-driven user base.

YTD, StarkGate has maintained its dominance, capturing over 65% of total inflows due to its native role and wide adoption. Orbiter held around 20% market share, with notable activity in Q4’23, but experienced a slight decline in the following quarters. Layerswap continued its steady growth, remaining under 5% in total share.

Other Infrastructure and Tooling

Other infrastructure and tooling projects within the Starknet ecosystem include but not limited to:

  • Pragma (Oracle): Pragma is a decentralized zk-native oracle on Starknet that provides real-time, verifiable data feeds for DeFi protocols, launched in 2022. Its fully onchain architecture allows protocols to access secure, transparent data without offchain infrastructure, making it a critical tool for DeFi protocols. Pragma offers various feeds, including price, computational, and verifiable random functions (VRF). In September 2024, it introduced optimistic oracles on Starknet, allowing secure, permissionless dispute resolution and off-chain data integration into DeFi.
  • As of Q3’24, according to Dune(@hessish), Pragma has processed over 358,353 oracle-related transactions, averaging 1,143 transactions daily and generating over $132,557 in protocol fees on Starknet. Transaction activity peaked around March 2024, highlighting increased protocol activity, likely due to expanding integrations with key DeFi protocols. The oracle’s growing transaction volume and rising fee revenue may suggest Pragma’s increasing role as a critical infrastructure for data feeds on Starknet.
  • Pyramid (NFT Marketplace): Pyramid is a leading NFT marketplace on Starknet, launched in August 2022. It supports a wide range of NFT collections, including verified, affiliate-verified, and unverified collections, offering users a comprehensive trading environment. Pyramid allows for dynamic profile customization, features a permissionless launchpad, and includes extensive search functionalities that let users explore collections by name, contract address, or domain name. In Q3 2024, Pyramid introduced several enhancements, including API and infrastructure sharing and mobile optimization plans, aiming to democratize NFT creation through a permissionless launchpad.
  • Argent (Smart Wallet): This popular, non-custodial wallet is explicitly designed for Ethereum L2 solutions like Starknet. It offers a user-friendly experience with advanced features like multi-sig security, gasless transactions, and integrated DeFi tools, making it accessible to beginners and experienced users. Argent also leverages Starknet’s native account abstraction properties to manage wallet functionality, allowing for features like recovery options without needing seed phrases, making it highly secure and easy to use.

Gaming

The Starknet Foundation supports the growth of the gaming ecosystem through strategic initiatives. In March 2024, it launched the Gaming Committee, a six-member council focused on expanding gaming on Starknet. The committee’s mission is to design and recommend programs that incentivize developers to build games and encourage players to engage with them. 50 million STRK was reserved to fund gaming programs recommended by the committee.

Propulsion Pilot Program

In May 2024, the Foundation unveiled the Propulsion Pilot program, an initiative to support development teams in launching games on Starknet Mainnet (or appchains settled on Starknet Mainnet). The program is structured to support both existing and upcoming games, offering up to $1 million per project in the form of gas rebates. Through this program, the Foundation hopes to alleviate the financial burden of network fees that developers face while scaling blockchain-based games. Projects selected for the program receive rebates based on the gas users spend playing these games on Starknet Mainnet.

Each eligible project will receive up to $1 million in STRK over a year. The fee-matching schedule follows a decaying structure:

  • 90% of gas spent, up to the first $100,000
  • 85% of gas spent for the next $100,000
  • 80% of gas spent for the subsequent $100,000

This continues until the $1 million cap is reached, and grants are paid monthly based on gas usage. Additionally, projects live on the mainnet or testnet at the time of application received an upfront $50,000 to support their launch. In June 2024, following a four-phase application process, 20 projects were selected for the first season (“Season 0”) of the Pilot Program, including both existing and upcoming games. Some notable titles selected and detailed below include Influence, Loot Survivor Series, Dope Wars, Force Prime, and Focus Tree.

Influence

Influence is a gaming title developed by Unstoppable Games Inc., one of the earliest teams to commit to Starknet in 2021. Influence debuted on Starknet mainnet in June 2024 as a strategic MMO where players explore the “Adalian asteroid belt,” a space-themed environment comprised of 250,000 generated asteroids and five virtual planets. Within the gaming

environment, players can build colonies through resource management, mining, and trade. Players begin by creating an account and purchasing starter packs, which provide essential crewmates.
Players advance within the game by managing resources, leasing lands, and building infrastructure. They compete against other players to earn rewards in SWAY, the in-game currency. SWAY is used for fees and facilitating in-game trades. Players can also earn SWAY by leasing lots and selling materials on the market.

The more proficient a player becomes at leveraging resources, building infrastructure, and controlling trade, the more rewards they accumulate, expanding their influence and advancing within the game. As of Q3’24, according to Dune, players have accrued over 1 million SWAY from gameplay.

Dope Wars

Dope Wars is a decentralized, community-driven gaming project initially launched on Ethereum and then Starknet in 2022, developed by the Catridge team. Inspired by the classic Drugwars game and modern GTA-style gameplay, Dope Wars offers a metaverse centered around money, power, and respect themes. The game operates with a player-controlled economy where players create and control customizable avatars, known as Hustlers, equipped with various NFT-based gear. These avatars compete and trade in a street-inspired environment, aiming to dominate different sectors of the game’s economy.

The game’s in-world currency, PAPER, is used for trading and equipping characters, while DOPE, the governance token, allows holders to participate in decisions through the Dope DAO. Players can engage in various game modes, including Mean Streets, a competitive shooter, and Roll Your Own, which brings the original Drugwars gameplay onchain through Starknet and the Dojo Engine.

Force Prime

Force Prime Heroes is a blockchain-powered, turn-based strategy game built on Starknet, leveraging the Dojo Engine and Unity to create a fully onchain gaming experience. The game draws inspiration from classic strategy titles like Heroes of Might and Magic, with a focus on tactical gameplay, where players collect and customize heroes, build armies, and engage in strategic battles. Players must carefully manage their resources and optimize their heroes’ abilities to succeed in this competitive environment.

Force Prime Heroes integrates decentralized ownership and governance, allowing players to influence the game’s development and make decisions through community-driven proposals. The game’s seasonal structure incentivizes players to compete for top leaderboard positions, earning in-game rewards and STRK tokens.

This structure promotes active engagement and rewards strategic mastery, positioning Force Prime Heroes as a key player in the onchain gaming ecosystem.

Focus Tree

Focus Tree is an onchain productivity app built on Starknet that gamifies focus and concentration by allowing users to cultivate virtual gardens. The app is designed to help users reduce digital distractions by turning focus time into a rewarding, growth-based experience. Players set a focus timer, and during this period, distractions are blocked while they accumulate points and digital items to grow their personalized gardens.

The app integrates several social features, fostering community through collaborative challenges and shared productivity goals. Users can connect with friends, compete in focus sessions, and monitor each other’s progress. One of the key incentives is the ability to earn STRK rewards for achieving focus milestones. With backing from Starkware and other notable supporters, the project exemplifies how blockchain can be applied beyond traditional DeFi and gaming use cases, tapping into everyday utility and self-improvement.

Loot Realms

Loot Realms is an onchain game developed by Bibliotheca DAO on Starknet, designed to offer a decentralized, player-driven experience. The game centers around the Loot NFT project, where players own tokenized assets such as land, resources, and characters. These assets form the basis of gameplay in which players manage resources, build alliances, and engage in political and military strategy to expand their influence in a procedurally generated world. All in-game assets, including NFTs, are fully tradable and stakable, giving players complete ownership and control over their digital assets.​

The Realms ecosystem is divided into multiple games, including Realms: Eternum, a strategy-focused game where players act as Lords, and Realms: Adventurers, a creator-driven environment that offers toolkits and engines for users to develop their onchain games. Built on Starknet, the game leverages the network’s scalability and low fees to ensure seamless, decentralized gameplay. Realms aim to create fully autonomous worlds, combining blockchain-based asset ownership with immersive, onchain strategy and governance.

Dojo – Provable Game Engine on Starknet

Dojo is a provable onchain game engine designed to enable the creation of games optimized for user ownership, interoperability, and extensibility. Built on Starknet, Dojo provides a comprehensive software framework that empowers developers to build high-quality, seamless, and fast games entirely onchain.

Key components of the engine include:

  • Entity Component System (ECS) for modular game design
  • Sozu migration planner for deploying game worlds,
  • Torii networking and indexing stack for efficient data querying and
  • Katana RPC development network for testing and deployment.

These tools streamline game development, allowing creators to focus on crafting engaging experiences without reinventing foundational systems.

Dojo’s ecosystem on Starknet continues to expand, with a growing portfolio of games such as Dope Wars, Influence, Realms, and CafeCosmos adopting and operating its framework. These games demonstrate the engine’s ability to support complex mechanics, such as player-owned economies, resource management, and dynamic interactions, leveraging Starknet’s low-cost execution environment.

Ecosystem Grant Programs

Starknet Catalyst

In May 2024, the Starknet Foundation unveiled the Starknet Catalyst program, an initiative to recognize and reward decentralized applications that have made significant contributions to the Starknet ecosystem. The program was funded with over 20 million STRK distributed to select projects across two categories:

  • Trailblazer: Established leaders within the ecosystem, showcasing unique innovations. Trailblazer awardees at that time included Ekubo (DEX), AVNU( Aggregator), Influence (Gaming), Realms (Gaming), and Nostra (multi-purpose DeFi app).
  • Rising Stars: Emerging projects with the potential to make significant contributions. Seventeen projects were selected for the Rising Star categories, including Nimbora (Yield), zkLend (Lending), StarknetID (Infrastructure) Focus Tree (Gaming).

Awardees were evaluated based on several criteria, including TVL, Active Users, fees generated, token launches and design, transactions, and user and community engagement. Additional information on the program can be found here.

The foundation has also launched two grant programs to support early and late-stage projects building within the Starknet ecosystem:

  • Seed Grants Program : Supports early-stage projects building on Starknet with up to $25,000 in grant funding per team. Early-stage projects with a Proof-of-Concept or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) can apply for funding. As of September 2024, the program has supported several notable projects, from DEXs to gaming and social applications such as LayerAkira, STRKFarm, and StarkFit.
  • Growth Grant Program: Supports later-stage projects that are actively expanding and building within the Starknet ecosystem, with up to $1 million in funding per team. However, teams must have a compelling product and undergo a rigorous application process.

Developer Ecosystem

Starknet’s reliance on Cairo, a custom programming language, presents challenges in attracting developers. To address this, the Starknet Foundation launched initiatives like the Devonomics Pilot Program in December 2023. This program allocated over 1,600 ETH (approximately $3.5 million) to reward developers, derived from 10% of all transaction fees from November 2021 to November 2023.

Additionally, Starknet launched Basecamp, an educational initiative designed to equip developers with the skills necessary to build on the L2. Basecamp offers structured learning resources, including tutorials, workshops, and comprehensive documentation on the Cairo programming language, with the goal of lowering the entry barriers associated with Cairo’s unique syntax and concepts. Through this initiative, developers gain hands-on experience writing smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) using Cairo. The program runs multiple learning cohorts all through the year with an emphasis on practical application, enabling participants to build and deploy projects on Starknet. By demystifying Cairo and providing accessible learning pathways, Starknet Basecamp fosters a growing community of proficient developers within the Starknet ecosystem. As of Q3’24, over 20 learning cohorts have been concluded across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

These efforts have yielded positive outcomes, with monthly active developers increasing by 38% year-over-year to 820 by June 2024, according to Electric Capital, peaking at 900 developers in February. However, the developer community has plateaued in recent months, partly because Cairo’s complexity and limited exposure have slowed its broader adoption. According to DefiLlama, Cairo-based contracts accounted for only 0.16% of overall TVL in smart contracts in Q3 2024, a significant decline from 0.46% at the start of the year, underlining the ongoing challenge of expanding Cairo’s developer base.

To mitigate this, Starknet is integrating Kakarot EVM to introduce EVM compatibility, allowing Solidity-based dApps to be deployed directly on the network. This dual-VM approach, expected to go live by Q4 2024, could attract more developers from the EVM communities to Starknet. Hence, enabling those familiar with Ethereum’s development environment to build on Starknet without learning Cairo, and as such, enhancing ecosystem growth and activity.

Upcoming Upgrade

In Q4 2024, Starknet will introduce native STRK staking as part of its transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol. This initiative will increase community participation in securing the network and support its gradual decentralization. Users will be able to participate in two key ways:

  • Staking: Users can operate full nodes as validators by staking a minimum of 20,000 STRK. Validators will take on increasing responsibilities as the protocol evolves and may opt to receive delegations.
  • Delegation: Users who prefer not to run a full node can delegate their STRK to validators that accept delegation, receiving a share of the validator’s rewards.

The staking mechanism will feature the following core parameters:

  • The protocol’s reward issuance follows a minting curve, balancing participation and inflation.
  • Unstaking Lockup: A 21-day lockup period will apply when unstaking.
  • Reward Distribution: Rewards will be based on the amount of STRK staked and the validator’s commission policy.

Additional features in development, set for release in 2025, are outlined in the project’s roadmap.

Closing Summary

Starknet has seen substantial growth since its November 2021 launch. Built around the Cairo Virtual Machine (Cairo VM), Starknet leverages zk-proof technology to provide an efficient execution environment for high-performance applications such as gaming and DeFi. As of Q3’24, Starknet’s ecosystem hosts over 80 applications, with its TVL surging 550% YTD to $252 million. This growth is largely driven by the launch of the STRK token in February 2024 and the DeFi Spring program, which distributes STRK rewards to incentivize liquidity and participation across the ecosystem.

Starknet’s DeFi sector has been the key player in its expansion, with protocols like Nostra leading the lending market and capturing 65% of STRK rewards in Q3 2024. Despite this, the adoption of Starknet’s custom programming language, Cairo, remains limited, with Cairo-based contracts accounting for just 0.16% of DeFi TVL in Q3. To address this, Starknet plans to integrate Kakarot EVM by Q4’24, allowing Solidity-based applications to run on its network and expanding its developer base. Additionally, the upcoming launch of STRK staking will further decentralize the network by enabling users to participate in securing it through staking and delegation.

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