"Starknet currently has only 8 daily active users and just 10 daily transactions, yet its market cap still stands at $1 billion, with a fully diluted valuation reaching $15 billion." On January 14, 2026, this tweet from Solana’s official social account landed like a stone in a tranquil lake, instantly stirring up waves across the crypto community. The eye-catching figures quickly sparked responses and playful banter from industry leaders, including the CEO of StarkWare.
The Controversy: How One Tweet Sparked an Industry Debate
Competition in the crypto world is always direct, but this time, Solana’s public jab brought the long-standing debate over Layer 1 vs. Layer 2 valuations into the spotlight.
Solana’s timing for the tweet was strategic. Starknet had just announced a major milestone: its total value locked (TVL) had returned to $300 million. The tweet quickly gained traction within the crypto community, prompting widespread discussion among developers and investors alike. Within hours, the post was circulating rapidly across crypto social platforms.
The Data: Outdated Numbers vs. Current Reality
The most controversial claim—"8 daily active users"—does not reflect Starknet’s current reality. This number appears to come from outdated or selectively chosen data snapshots, likely from a period after the 2024 airdrop when activity dipped. More recent data paints a different picture. According to Dune Analytics, Starknet processes about 245,416 transactions daily, with 2,369 active transaction addresses in a recent activity window. Other estimates suggest Starknet has roughly 65,000 daily active users and handles about 759,000 daily operations.
Based on the official Dune dashboard created by the Starknet Foundation, Starknet’s daily active users currently range between 2,000 and 4,000, with daily transaction counts exceeding 240,000. While this is down from the peak of over 100,000 daily active users in 2023, the current transaction frequency is about one-third of that high. This indicates that the users remaining on Starknet are primarily high-quality participants with genuine transactional needs.
Valuation Logic: Execution-Driven vs. Option-Driven Models
At the heart of this debate lies a fundamental disagreement over how blockchain networks should be valued. Solana’s critique suggests that token valuations should closely track observable user activity. From this perspective, regardless of technological maturity, a network with limited daily active users shouldn’t command a multi-billion dollar fully diluted valuation.
Starknet supporters see things differently. As a zero-knowledge rollup, Starknet’s pricing is based on its long-term infrastructure relevance, alignment with Ethereum, and cryptographic scalability—not short-term user throughput.
These two valuation philosophies can be summarized as follows: execution-driven valuation, which focuses on current usage and transaction volume; and option-driven valuation, which prices in future adoption and technological potential.
Starknet’s Comeback: From "Ghost Town" to Leading Capital Inflows
After more than a year of effort, Starknet has proven itself competitive with most Layer 1 networks.
According to DeFiLlama, Starknet’s TVL began recovering in September 2025 and now exceeds $300 million, returning to its 2024 levels. Even more notably, Starknet leads in capital inflows. Artemis data shows that Starknet saw a net inflow of $504.2 million over the past three months, topping the blockchain rankings. The second-place network, Polygon, trails by $100 million.
A key driver of this turnaround is Starknet’s full commitment to the BTCFi ecosystem. In March 2025, Starknet’s parent company, StarkWare, announced the creation of a "strategic Bitcoin reserve." By September of the same year, Starknet launched BTC staking and a 100 million STRK incentive program.
Market Reaction and Gate Price Data
The controversy also had a direct impact on the market. Monitoring revealed that after the dispute, a whale address opened a STRK short position with roughly 5x leverage. According to Gate price data, as of January 16, 2026, Starknet’s price changed by -5.02% over the past 24 hours. Currently, STRK’s circulating supply stands at 5.2 billion, with both total and maximum supply at 10 billion STRK.
From a market cap perspective, STRK’s capitalization is $435.49 million, with a fully diluted market cap of $836.5 million, and a market cap/FDV ratio of 52.06%. These figures differ significantly from the "$15 billion fully diluted valuation" cited in Solana’s tweet. Market sentiment for Starknet is currently marked as "bullish." According to Gate’s price prediction data, Starknet’s average price in 2026 may hover around $0.08383, with expected price fluctuations between $0.06706 and $0.09808.
Industry Reflection: Deeper Competition Beyond Tweets and Jokes
This controversy is about much more than a dispute over eight users or ten transactions. It represents a narrative clash between two opposing blockchain philosophies: visible activity versus invisible infrastructure.
Solana leverages selective metrics to reinforce its identity as a high-usage, execution-first network, while Starknet highlights the limitations of surface-level data when evaluating long-term scaling solutions. The debate produced no clear winner, but it serves as a reminder that in crypto, valuation is both narrative and statistics.
For investors, builders, and analysts, the message is clear: data without context can mislead, and narratives lacking fundamental support will eventually collapse.
Gate data shows that during the height of the controversy, STRK’s 24-hour trading volume reached $1.55 million, with prices fluctuating between $0.083 and $0.08933. The debate didn’t dampen investor enthusiasm. Within hours, monitoring revealed that two whale addresses began partially closing short positions to take profits, with average entry prices around $0.0897 and overall returns of roughly 15%. The market always digests narratives at lightning speed, ultimately returning to intrinsic value.
