Starknet’s token holders have voted to study a question rather than to settle it. A seven-day governance poll closed on October 22 with 93.52 percent of voting power in favor of researching whether the network should become an independent, quantum-resistant layer 1 instead of remaining a layer 2 on Ethereum. About 3,200 wallets took part. The ballot was non-binding, and StarkWare, which first floated the idea on October 8, abstained, leaving the decision to STRK holders and their delegates.
The result is a research mandate, and the limits of that mandate are the most useful part of the outcome. Starknet keeps operating as an Ethereum layer 2, STRK stays the token, and the bridges between the two networks remain open. Nothing about a validator’s duties or a holder’s assets changes today. A final decision to run a standalone chain would require another governance vote, after StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation publish the design work; StarkWare has said it plans to publish a draft whitepaper in November.
Why study independence at all? The argument rests on a split between what Starknet controls and what it borrows. Starknet’s proofs are STARKs, built on collision-resistant hash functions rather than the discrete-logarithm and elliptic-curve assumptions that underpin most blockchain signatures and commitments. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break those elliptic-curve constructions with Shor’s algorithm, but it cannot brute-force a well-chosen hash. The parts of Starknet that are Starknet’s own can therefore be made quantum-safe on Starknet’s own schedule.
The parts it does not control cannot. StarkWare’s roadmap names two remaining dependencies: the bridge’s messaging layer and the data-availability layer, where state-diff data is published to Ethereum as EIP-4844 blobs anchored by KZG commitments. KZG commitments are elliptic-curve cryptography, and StarkWare marks them quantum-vulnerable. Ethereum has its own post-quantum path, including discussion of a rewrite of its deposit contract, but that timeline is not Starknet’s to set.
Not every participant reads the move as progress. Validators in the community have argued that becoming a layer 1 does not make Starknet more decentralized; it makes the network responsible for its own security. Today Starknet leans on Ethereum for finality and censorship resistance. A standalone chain would hand block production, finality, and data availability to its own validator set, where a minimum stake of 20,000 STRK would back a materially larger security load. In that reading, independence is a transfer of dependency rather than a gain in decentralization.
What the vote does fix is the questions holders ask first. The proposal states plainly that STRK remains the token, with no new token, and that bridges from Ethereum to Starknet stay open. That removes the dilution and migration-friction scenarios that usually shadow this kind of decision. The next observable step is not a launch but a whitepaper, and the step after that is another vote.
The ballot also lands inside a broader industry move toward post-quantum standards. Starknet’s vote does not commit the network to any of those paths. It commits the network to producing a design that its community can judge, and then to voting again. Starknet has chosen to study the exit before taking it.
Source: BlockchainReporter.