StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation have announced a devonomics pilot program that will distribute a portion of the Layer 2 network fees to developers building on Starknet, the scalable and decentralized ZK-Rollup network.
Under the program, Starknet developers on the network will receive a 10% share of all transaction operator fees accumulated since its launch in Nov. 2022 till the end of last month, totaling 1,6000 ETH (over $35 million).
The distribution of rewards will be automated and paid out to developers based on the level of fees generated by each dApp.
After initial distributions in ether, future payments will be made in the soon-to-launch governance tokens for the network, called STRK. This will happen after the upcoming Starknet upgrade to version 0.13, which will introduce fee payments in STRK.
Whenever a transaction occurs on Starknet, the operator collects fees for various network expenses, such as sequencing transactions, generating STARK proofs, and storing data.
Currently, there is only one operator and, therefore, one collector of fees: StarkWare, the company behind Starknet. The network aims to be decentralized in the future, allowing other operators to start permissionlessly taking on this role.
According to StarkWare CEO Uri Kolodny, the fee program aims to support both established and new developers in the ecosystem.
“STRK came into existence to facilitate Starknet governance and operation. In the future, those who have the token will be able to vote in proportion to their holding and stake, too”
Uri Kolodny
The allocation of operator fees is set at 10% of total collected fees, amounting to 1,600 ether ($3.5 million). Of this, 8% will go to dApp developers and 2% to core developers, resulting in 1,280 ether for dApp builders and 320 ether for core developers.
The devonomics payouts will be separate from Starknet Foundation’s recently announced plan to distribute 1.8 billion STRK tokens in the form of user contributor rewards and rebates.
These initiatives are part of the broader vision of creating a vibrant and sustainable community around Starknet, which leverages zero-knowledge proofs to enable scalable and secure transactions on Ethereum.
