Should Starknet Leave Ethereum? Voters Back Post-Quantum L1 Research at 93.52%

Update 05:32 UTC: The new source also itemizes the dissent for the first time as 4.57% against and 1.91% neutral, weighted by voting power rather than ballot count, alongside the 3,236 ballots carrying about 489.3 million Starknet (STRK) in total.

3,200 Votes on One Question

Should Starknet leave Ethereum? The network’s community has now answered, and emphatically. A week-long governance vote asking whether Starknet should research an independent, post-quantum layer-1 blockchain closed on Thursday, October 22, with roughly 3,200 votes cast. The result, recorded on the public vote registry of the Starknet governance portal, shows 93.52% of voting power in favor of exploring the transition, leaving roughly 6.5% of participating power opposed or withheld. The registry lists the proposal under Starknet’s governance namespace, so anyone can verify the tallies on-chain. Although the poll is non-binding, StarkWare says it drew the highest participation in the network’s governance history, and the company abstained entirely to leave the decision with the community. What the outcome authorizes is research, not a move. StarkWare and the Starknet (STRK) Foundation may now study what an independent L1 would look like, while any actual departure from Ethereum would require a separate, binding vote that has not yet been scheduled. Until such a vote passes, Starknet continues to operate as an Ethereum layer-2 network, as it does today. StarkWare first put the idea forward on October 8, when it posted the question on the network’s community forum in deliberately blunt terms: should Starknet become an independent, post-quantum L1? The phrasing turned an engineering debate about security dependence into the widest consultation the network has run. Starknet already uses hash-based STARK proofs and supports programmable accounts that can adopt post-quantum signatures designed to keep private keys safe against a future quantum computer. Its bridge and data availability infrastructure, however, remain tied to Ethereum’s own upgrade timeline, and closing that gap is what this vote addressed. COINOTAG followed the ballot from the start, when the seven-day vote went live on October 15 with the same question attached.

STRK Stays While Research Begins

The outcome allows StarkWare and the Starknet (STRK) Foundation to stand up a working group that will examine the proposed transition and draft more detailed technical proposals. The proposal on the Starknet forum also fixes several parameters of any future move: STRK would remain the network’s native token, no new token is planned, and existing bridge protocol connections between Starknet and Ethereum would stay open. For STRK holders, the immediate readout is stability: the token they hold does not change, no migration or swap is planned, and the routes for moving assets in both directions keep functioning. StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson set the pace for the research. “We’re beginning work on a whitepaper even before we start the weekend, and hope to release a draft for public scrutiny in November,” he said. In June, StarkWare laid out a three-phase quantum-resistance roadmap covering cryptographic upgrades, smart-contract migration and the infrastructure Starknet shares with Ethereum (ETH). A sufficiently capable quantum computer could eventually break the elliptic-curve cryptography that secures most blockchain signatures today, which is why hash-based schemes such as STARK are already considered quantum-resistant. StarkWare’s Quantum Hub reports that it has already processed a transaction on Starknet’s live network using technology built to withstand quantum attacks, though it remains experimental and has not yet undergone a security audit. An exit would also move where Starknet’s data availability lives, a structural question the working group must resolve before any binding proposal could be drafted. Ben-Sasson has set a 2027 target for making Starknet quantum-resistant, ahead of Ethereum’s own projected timeline. “Ethereum’s target of 2029 to become quantum-safe is too late, and deadlines slip,” he said. The sequencing now runs: a whitepaper draft in November, technical proposals from the working group after that, and only then, potentially, the binding vote that would decide whether Starknet departs from Ethereum (ETH).

The final tally behind that 93.52% share is now fully itemized on the vote record: 3,236 ballots carrying roughly 489 million STRK in voting weight, with about 458 million backing the research, 22.38 million against and 9.33 million marked neutral for a combined 6.48% of dissent and abstention. Participation was open to STRK stakers and their delegates over the seven-day window. The forum debate also surfaced a sharper objection than the headline result suggests: one respondent argued that leaving Ethereum would mean abandoning its security budget and shifting that burden onto existing STRK stakers, asking what economic security target an L1 launch would carry and whether the 2027 quantum date is a commitment or a fallback. A Starknet Foundation representative called those fair questions that the research phase could answer if the vote came back positive.

The Starknet Foundation followed the close with a results post on its governance forum confirming the next step: it and StarkWare will run a joint working group and publish its findings to the forum, with detailed proposals going back to the community for further votes if the work supports a move. The Foundation also asked node operators, app builders and STRK holders to submit the questions they want the research to answer. Ben-Sasson used X to reaffirm the guardrails, writing that any path to an L1 transition "will be brought to a community vote" and calling the outcome "a huge shift and a milestone," while Starknet's official account said the network is "targeting full post-quantum security by 2027" but cannot complete the shift while its bridge and data availability stay tied to Ethereum's timeline.

StarkWare has added a new participation figure to the record, saying that more than 2,800 distinct wallets took part in the seven-day ballot, a detail that breaks the roughly 3,200 vote count down to individual addresses for the first time. The company repeated that it left its own voting power unused so the community's decision would stand on its own, and it framed the case for the research around a single dependency: even with quantum-resistant accounts progressing inside Starknet, the Ethereum (ETH) bridge and data availability links keep the network anchored to Ethereum's upgrade schedule. The company also restated the near-term deliverable, with CEO Eli Ben-Sasson aiming to publish a first public draft of the technical paper in November, and confirmed that under any path STRK stays the native token, no new token is issued and the Ethereum bridges remain open.

Starknet's official account confirmed on X that a joint working group from StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation began leading the research the day after the vote closed, with a paper due in the coming months. The account's post restated that actual migration would need detailed proposals and further governance votes. The new source also itemizes the dissent for the first time as 4.57% against and 1.91% neutral, weighted by voting power rather than ballot count, alongside the 3,236 ballots carrying about 489.3 million STRK in total.

The Exit Question Stays Open

COINOTAG’s read: this week’s result is a mandate for a paper, not a fork. Record turnout gives StarkWare cover to fund the research, yet nothing on-chain changes for STRK holders, whose token and bridge routes are untouched. The market has not priced an exit either: our earlier coverage recorded STRK sliding 15.1% in 24 hours from the $0.1265 October peak, and STRK technical analysis still frames the token in a pullback rather than a breakout. The untested, unaudited state of the quantum technology behind the plan argues for DYOR discipline among holders. The decisive question, whether research becomes an actual departure from Ethereum, now waits on a binding vote nobody has scheduled (as of 13:37 UTC).