Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Asher (@Asher_0210)
Last night, BTC continued to decline, briefly falling below $80,500, while major altcoins generally pulled back; however, STRK rose against the trend, surging over 40% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at $0.0684.
This L2, which was mocked by the market earlier this year for having only 8 daily active users and 10 daily transactions, has suddenly become a focal point. This rally is primarily driven by a statement from StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson. Yesterday afternoon, he suggested that, to accelerate quantum-resistant upgrades, the team is considering detaching Starknet from Ethereum and transitioning it into an independent L1. After the news spread on social media, the price of STRK surged rapidly.
Quantum resistance and L1 transition—two new narratives—will they truly transform Starknet’s “no one is using it” reputation, or merely spark a short-lived hype cycle?
Quantum-resistant concepts are gaining momentum, and Starknet already has mainnet testing underway.
As early as June 30 of this year, StarkWare released the quantum-resistant roadmap for Starknet, planning to implement security upgrades in three phases to address potential future threats from quantum computing. This upgrade is technically grounded in Starknet’s underlying architecture based on STARK proofs.
Subsequently, StarkWare announced mainnet transfer testing. A wallet account using OpenZeppelin’s experimental Falcon-512 post-quantum signature scheme completed a real transfer on Starknet with a fee of approximately $0.06. The account remains an unaudited experimental version, primarily intended for research and testing purposes.
Quantum-resistant signatures address wallet security issues. When users transfer funds, they must sign transactions with their private key to authorize them. If quantum computers in the future can break traditional signature algorithms, attackers could forge authorizations and steal assets. Quantum-resistant signatures use different cryptographic schemes to defend against such attacks.
Starknet's advantage lies in the ability for wallets to directly upgrade their signing schemes. Each account is a smart contract that can define its own signature verification rules, enabling the introduction of quantum-resistant signatures while retaining the original address and assets—without requiring a network-wide hard fork.
However, a single experimental transfer does not mean the entire network is now quantum-resistant. Beyond wallet signatures, other components of the network require upgrades, some of which depend on Ethereum.
Why consider switching to L1? The quantum-resistant upgrade is still dependent on Ethereum.
As an Ethereum L2, Starknet still relies on Ethereum for settlement and underlying security. Even after completing its own quantum-resistant upgrade, it will still depend on Ethereum for data availability, bridging, and message passing, and cannot unilaterally determine the pace of upgrades for all security components. Therefore, if Starknet aims to achieve a full quantum-resistant upgrade sooner, it must consider whether to continue depending on Ethereum.
Yesterday afternoon, Eli Ben-Sasson stated that the team is considering various options, including a shift to L1, to address cryptographic risks posed by quantum computing and AI. According to his assessment, if Starknet can maintain control over its upgrade process, it could achieve full quantum resistance as early as 2027, ahead of Ethereum’s target end of 2029.
This statement linked Starknet’s previous quantum-resistant exploration with the possibility of transitioning into an independent L1. The market has thus developed a new expectation: this established L2 may no longer serve solely as an Ethereum scaling solution, but could instead build its own public chain and independently determine its security upgrade roadmap—becoming a key catalyst for STRK’s price surge despite market conditions.
However, the team has not yet decided whether to transition to L1, and the full quantum resistance upgrade by 2027 is only an expectation—the exact timeline remains to be confirmed.
May be short-term hype; network revenue will be the next test.
Starknet's quantum-resistant exploration has made tangible progress, and transitioning to an independent L1 has clear technical motivations. However, currently, there remains considerable work to be done between experimental solutions requiring audit and promotion, and undecided discussions around the transition.
A more realistic issue is that, in the eyes of many users, Starknet is still an L2 that “no one is using.” Quantum resistance and a transition to L1 may attract attention, but whether users are willing to move their funds here and trade long-term depends on whether there are valuable products on-chain, sufficient liquidity, and a sufficiently good trading experience.
According to Nansen’s “Starknet H1 2026 Report,” in the second quarter of this year, Starknet averaged approximately 239,000 daily transactions and 50,000 daily active addresses. While it cannot be simply labeled as “unused,” trading activity remains highly concentrated, with AVNU and Cartridge accounting for about 91% of total volume, indicating strong reliance on a few applications within the ecosystem.
Beyond token price, growth in on-chain usage and revenue deserves greater attention. According to DefiLlama data, Starknet’s fee revenue over the past 24 hours was only $13,700. Compared to STRK’s over 30% price surge, the chain’s actual revenue remains limited; STRK’s counter-trend rally may merely reflect a “false boom” driven by new narratives, and its current circulating market cap of nearly $500 million may already be elevated.
The signal worth paying close attention to may be when on-chain transactions on Starknet continue to rise, generating sustained fee income for the network.