At the beginning: On July 14, 2022, in the official Starknet Discord channel "starknet-token," a message was posted stating that the token will go On-Chain in September. Additionally, they mentioned that most tokens will be locked for a minimum duration of one year and that there is no public sale planned. However, they were unable to stick to the plan and brought the token On-Chain in mid-November, and it is an ERC20 token. A total of 10 billion tokens were minted.
Quotes from the Starknet Discord
“It will take time for the Foundation to determine the mechanism for distributing its tokens”
“Tokens held by StarkWare shareholders, employees and by independent partner software developers are locked for a four year period, with a gradual release starting after one year”
“We’ve previously proposed a plan for initial allocation of the tokens. Tokens allocated to shareholders, employees, and independent software developers are locked for four years, with a gradual release schedule starting after one-year.
Separately, 50.1% of the existing Starknet tokens are allocated to the Starknet Foundation, to be used to meet its goals (cf. StarkWare’s post). These tokens are not locked. However, the Foundation will need time to formulate the exact mechanism to further allocate those tokens and will share its plans in due time.”
https://medium.com/starkware/starknet-token-is-deployed-on-ethereum-f27f0000b00c
“9% — Community Provisions — for those who performed work for Starknet and powered or developed its underlying technology, e.g. via past use of the StarkEx L2 systems. Crucially, all Community Provisions will be based on verifiable work that was performed in the past. For example, to the extent Community Provisions will be given to past StarkEx users, allocations will be determined based on verifiable usage of StarkEx’s technology that took place prior to June 1, 2022.”
“8.1% Unallocated — the Foundation’s unallocated treasury is in place to further support the Starknet community in a manner to be decided by the community.”
“If you are an end user, use Starknet — but only as it serves your needs today. Use it for those transactions and applications that you value, not in expectation of any future reward of Starknet Tokens. When Community Provisions are announced, they will refer only to snapshots that have occurred previous to the announcement date, and will filter and exclude usage that is deemed by it to be an abuse and gamification of the network, based on the information available at that point in time. When Community Rebates are instituted, they will never apply to transactions that occurred before the rebate was announced, so transacting today in anticipation of a future rebate is futile.”
https://medium.com/starkware/part-3-starknet-token-design-5cc17af066c6
Community Rebates/ Provisions: 18%
Starkware Investors/ Core Contributors/ Foundation: 59,9%
Grants and Donations: 14%
Unallocated: 8.1%
https://twitter.com/argentHQ/status/1681684334611247104?s=20