Author: Golem
Original title: 8 Daily Active Users? The Truth Behind the Solana vs. Starknet Public Opinion War
On the evening of January 14, Solana's official account posted a message without warning , mocking Starknet for "having only 8 daily active users and 10 daily transactions, yet supporting a circulating market value of $1 billion and a maximum valuation of $15 billion," and bluntly stating that Starknet should be worthless.
An hour after the post was published, Starknet quickly responded with an image of an ugly chimpanzee and the comment, "Who gave this data to that little brother Solana?" Starknet CEO even resorted to personal attacks, commenting under Eli Ben-Sasson's sarcastic post, "Solana has 8 marketing interns (all bald) who tweet 10 times a day." Solana co-founder Toly also posted , "This post got a great response; I should be promoted to the responsible marketing person."
Amidst the tense standoff, some figures in the crypto community began to urge reconciliation. He Yiposted , "Take a deep breath and relax, we're all friends, let's value peace," but also added "peanuts, melon seeds, and mineral water," indicating a detached, amused stance. Near's official account posted that Solana and Starknet should be able to become friends again.
However, some believe this was a deliberate publicity stunt orchestrated by the platform to generate buzz and build anticipation for future collaborations. Meanwhile, netizens have uncovered that Solana's post was not original; a user had already published the exact same tweet back in April 2024.
Solana's mocking tweet about Starknet was a copy-paste of a tweet from a user in 2024.
Regardless of the real reason why Solana's editor suddenly fell ill and mocked Starknet, in terms of data, Starknet is no longer the "ghost town on the blockchain" it once was.
Thunder in Silence
In 2024, the L2 market was highly competitive and dominated by leading companies. Arbitrum and OP mainnet had already covered a large number of common scenarios. Therefore, when Starknet's airdrop ended, it lost a significant number of users and became the target of criticism and ridicule.
But after more than a year of hard work and perseverance, Starknet is now able to compete with most L1 blockchains. According to DeFiLlama data, Starknet's TVL (TVL) began to recover in September 2025 and has now exceeded $300 million, returning to 2024 levels. It ranks 22nd in blockchain rankings, surpassing Monad, Scroll, Linea, Sei, and many other L1 and L2 blockchains.
Meanwhile, its stablecoin market capitalization, transaction fee revenue, and ecosystem DEX trading volume all began to rebound after September 2025. Starknet's daily transaction fee revenue has remained in the range of $5,000-$10,000 over the past four months. Although this is not as high as the daily transaction fee revenue in 2023-2024 (averaging over $150,000 per day), it still ranks among the top in many blockchains.
In mid-December, Odaily Odaily compiled a ranking of transaction fee revenue for 40 mainstream blockchains, with Starknet ranking in the top 15, surpassing blockchains such as Monad and TON in daily transaction fee revenue.
In terms of on-chain activity, Starknet has finally cultivated a group of truly loyal users (rather than just freeloaders). According to the Dune data panel created by the Starknet Foundation, Starknet currently maintains 2,000-4,000 daily active users (individual addresses) and more than 240,000 daily transactions.
Compared to Starknet's peak of over 100,000 daily active users (DAU) in 2023, its current DAU is indeed negligible. However, in terms of transaction volume, the current transaction frequency of these addresses, which represent less than 2% of the total at that time, has reached about one-third of the level back then (over 600,000 daily transactions in 2023). This data proves that the users currently remaining on Starknet are high-quality users with genuine trading needs, and they contribute the majority of Starknet's network transaction fee revenue.
Don't simply view Starknet as a gathering place for "niche enthusiasts" in the blockchain space. In fact, Starknet has attracted external funding and boasts a high retention rate. According to Artemis data, Starknet's net inflow of funds over three months reached $504.2 million, ranking first among blockchains. Polygon, in second place, is $100 million behind, far surpassing blockchains like Solana and BSC.
Shedding the Ethereum L2 label, all in BTCFi
The reason Starknet was able to make a comeback is actually quite simple: instead of engaging in memes and trending narratives with blockchains like Solana, BSC, and Base, it went all in on BTCFi.
Starknet is now shedding its Ethereum L2 label, with its official account adding a note (BTCFi arc) to its name. In March 2025, Starknet's parent company, StarkWare, announced the establishment of a "strategic Bitcoin reserve," initially thought to be a publicity stunt, but it turned out Starknet was serious. In late September 2025, after more than six months of development, Starknet announced the launch of BTC staking and 100 million STRK incentives, allowing users to earn staking rewards and STRK incentives by staking BTC on Starknet.
To date, BTCFi has been online on Starknet for more than three months, and the product launch is highly positively correlated with the recovery of on-chain data on Starknet.
According to Dune data , the value of Bitcoin currently staked on Starknet exceeds $214 million, accounting for approximately 70% of Starknet's total TVL ($300 million). About 50% of the deposited assets on the platform are native BTC, with the remainder being various packaged versions of BTC, primarily SolvBTC and WBTC.
The Bitcoin ecosystem on Starknet has been gradually improved, with everything from wallets and cross-chain bridges to staking, lending, and yield protocols, and the gameplay has been successfully implemented.
Starknet BTCFi Ecosystem Landscape
Users can stake Bitcoin on the Endur and Voyager platforms and delegate it to validators. In return, stakers receive STRK tokens (Endur's current APY in STRK is approximately 2.09%). The earned LST tokens can then be deposited into lending protocols such as Vesu to earn interest. Re7 Capital can also develop customized yield plans for institutional investors.
As for why Starknet dared to go all-in on BTCFi, it may be related to the founder's personal experience. Back in 2013, before Starknet was even founded, Eli Ben-Sasson was already researching how to improve Bitcoin using zero-knowledge proofs, a research that ultimately became one of Starknet's core technologies (STARK cryptography). Therefore, fully embracing BTCFi today can be seen, to some extent, as a return to his original vision.
While the blockchain world doesn't always reward idealists and hard workers, Starknet has moved more nimbly and steadily without the "kidnapping" of airdrops.
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