Re-endorsement of wstETH on Starknet

Proposals
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Introduction

The Starknet Foundation is excited to introduce a proposal to re-endorse the wstETH bridge endpoints as canonical by the Lido DAO.

For context into the prior proposal that was passed, please view here; and for further context into the asset’s offboarding, please view here. For clarity, this issue occurred after the passing of the proposal and posed zero risk to holders.

Following the previous wstETH offboarding, the Starknet Foundation proceeded with an asset migration from wstETH(legacy) to the new wstETH following the recommended guidline.

That migration is now complete.

Upon the passing of this proposal, the governance roles for wstETH will be transferred to the Lido DAO.

wstETH Metrics

The wstETH migration process began on 3 February through the migration hub.

There is now ~3900 cumulative wstETH (new and old) on Starknet, with ~93% of all wstETH on Starknet being the new token. Migrations of legacy wstETH continue to take place.

These metrics can be verified in real-time: new wstETH and legacy wstETH.

wstETH rewards on Starknet are significantly above-average because of STRK incentives through the network’s current DeFi Spring program. As such, we expect TVL to continue to increase, and we believe that it is in the interest of both Starknet and the Lido DAO for this TVL to be recognized as canonical.

Up-To-Date Audits

Mainnet Contracts - StarkGate 2.0

Testnet (Sepolia) Contracts - StarkGate 2.0

Source code and Documentation

  • Source code repo for StarkGate 2.0 (Live on Mainnet).
  • Source code repo for the Lido - Starknet governance forwarder.
  • StarkGate Documentation.

Recommendation

With the prior proposal already having been passed initially, we believe it is practical to recognize the wstETH bridge endpoints as canonical by the Lido DAO.

We invite the Lido community to engage in discussions and provide feedback.

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Snapshot vote started

We’re starting the Re-endorsement of wstETH on Starknet Snapshot, active till Thu, 03 Apr 2025 20:29:00 GMT . Please don’t forget to cast your vote!

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Hi! I was a bit surprised to see the Snapshot vote go live before receiving any feedback or technical input from the Network Expansion Committee (NEC).

Want to clarify, on the Snapshot, one part says “migration is now complete,” while another says “migration continues to take place.”
Could you confirm the current status — is the migration fully completed or still ongoing?

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Hey Benjamin.

Thanks for the proposal and the snapshot initiation. It’s good to see decentralized governance working as intended.

Sadly, I’m voting “no” for the vote at hand.

The primary reasons are:
1.) The fact that it took you guys very long for disclosures and incident reports.
2.) Way of dealing with the incident itself.

Mistakes happen, can live with that but how one handles them is more important than anything else.

Note: I’m not part of the NEC and my opinion does not represent NEC stance on the matter.

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The Network Expansion Committee acknowledges the request to re-endorse wstETH on Starknet, but has decided not to proceed with the re-endorsement on behalf of the Lido DAO at this time and cannot recommend doing so.

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Hi Jenya - the migration is still live, but 90% of tokens have migrated.

The process will be live indefinitely because it’s infeasible for every single wstETH to migrate as it is not enforced and there are a significant number of holders.

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Hey-hey, Eugene M from the stETH value stream and a former NEC participant is here.

TL;DR: If you’re not fully convinced, it’s often better to step back and re-evaluate rather than push forward prematurely.

Every L2 plays a key role in the broader Ethereum ecosystem, just as it does in the Lido Multichain universe. However, granting an official endorsement from the Lido DAO goes beyond mere technical compatibility — it implies a mutual commitment to shared values and a coherent security culture.

The recent incident response and somewhat scarce retrospective report suggest that this alignment hasn’t been reached. At this moment, I don’t see support from either Lido contributors or external parties for the new deployment.

That said, a lack of endorsement shouldn’t be interpreted as outright rejection; it simply means the project needs to mature further in terms of cultural and security alignment. The token can still function and be used within the Starknet ecosystem; it just might not carry the “official Lido stamp”.

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First off, we voted against this proposal. We don’t have direct insight into exactly how the past incident was handled internally or all the communications that took place. However, the concerns publicly raised by @Jenya_K, @Marin, @TheDZhon, and @nikita.p regarding these points were significant. Judging from their comments, which suggest unresolved issues, we felt voting ‘No’ for now was the prudent choice.

But, this whole situation also got us thinking about the process itself. We noticed the proposal sat on the forum for about two weeks before the NEC’s detailed concerns were formally posted here, right around when the Snapshot vote kicked off. Of course, we don’t know what discussions might have happened privately between the Starknet team and Lido core contributors during that period. Still, the lack of public NEC feedback on the forum for that long before the vote started is worth noting.

This delay made us wonder about Lido’s own governance steps. If getting NEC feedback is considered essential before a bridge proposal like this goes to Snapshot, shouldn’t that be clearly written down in our official process?

Making it an explicit step – like requiring an NEC check before a Snapshot is triggered – would make things clearer for everyone involved and ensure important technical feedback doesn’t come in at the last minute.

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From our perspective we also encourage a pause, more thorough review, and clearer sequencing before revisiting a canonical endorsement. Similar to other’s point of view, it is not a rejection of Starknet’s long-term potential—but the proposal feels premature without stronger alignment and clearer procedural guardrails.

Also echoing @Tane’s point on process flow—having technically informed proposals acknowledged and validated by someone deeply involved in the domain is very valuable for delegators both as a sense check and starting point for further discussion/analysis.

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Hey Tane!

Thanks for this flag it’s both a fair point and a crack that caused misalignment in expectations. I’m sure NEC will take this in consideration for future cases which I hope will be 0.
This is an edge case and the first time that an asset has been “unendorsed,” so admit it might cause misalignment in the expectations of the delegates, community, other DAO contributors, and NEC over necessary communications.

From the NEC perspective, the case was addressed here.

NEC does not have a mandate for re-endorsements as this situation is unprecedented. Thus, directing the respective party to a regular flow has occurred.

How I understood the message was:

Sadly, due to the new fact that deployment is not per endorsement specs, it has to be removed. If you want to have it re-endorsed please use the regular DAO flow via Snapshot vote, which was executed 8 times before.

It never guaranteed new NEC approval just factually stated it’s no longer in NEC purview.

In any case, endorsement is not a requirement to have bridgable assets and get some levels of contributor support if needed. The Minimum requirement is audit and 3rd party verification that deployment equals audited code.

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To add on Marin’s comment, in this case where the endorsement is to be processed through snapshot vote by the token holders, and not by the NEC, the process falls back to the previous flow (pre-NEC) where the NEW (network expansion workgroup) served as an unofficial body that can provide opinions, advices, but does not have decision making power.

In this case, there was no signal from any side (delegates, proposer or other community members) for NEC to provide additional input.
“Two weeks” sitting is period longer than usual from forum post to snapshot vote, IMO there was enough time to ask questions.

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We’ve been following this thread and wanted to offer some clarity from Starknet’s side.

I lead Growth at the Starknet Foundation and have been directly involved in our coordination with members of the Lido Network Expansion Committee (NEC) over the past few months.

Given the level of collaboration throughout, the NEC’s decision to not support the Snapshot vote and the reasoning provided was unexpected.

Over the last few months, our team has worked closely with NEC members and representatives from LidoDAO. We:

  • agreed on a migration threshold before proposing re-endorsement (80% was the number shared);
  • reviewed and aligned on the proposal’s structure and language; and
  • coordinated on timing for both the forum post and the Snapshot submission.

Communications were collaborative, and no concerns were raised regarding the migration process, communication timeline or alignment with LidoDAO.

This was even the case during the two week period where the proposal was live on the forum prior to the Snapshot.

On the token migration:
The migration was successful. There are now over 5,000 wstETH tokens on Starknet — up from fewer than 900 prior to the process. More than 4,400 of those tokens sit in the new contract, meaning over 95% of wstETH on Starknet has already been migrated.

*You can see the legacy wstETH token contract here and the new wstETH token contract here.

On the incident response and communication timeline:
No user funds were ever at risk – which was our top priority from the start. Both teams agreed that the priority should be to protect and support end users.

The response timeline was developed collaboratively with the NEC and later accelerated at their request.

Over the course of one month, our team:

  • published a technical retrospective;
  • implemented and audited a fix;
  • shipped a migration UI;
  • coordinated with ecosystem teams; and
  • deployed an incentive program.

*You can follow the timeline of events and post mortem in the original forum post.

Throughout this period, we kept our points of contact at the NEC and LidoDAO updated, acquired LDO to submit the proposal, and coordinated closely up to submission.

Of course, we respect the NEC’s role in recommending actions for delegates and the DAO’s right to vote as it chooses. However, it can be challenging when a working group collaborates closely for months and then steps back at the voting stage, particularly if concerns weren’t communicated earlier.

We’ve reached out privately to the Lido team to better understand how this unfolded and whether a constructive path forward still exists.

Whatever happens in the vote, we will continue to support wstETH on Starknet. Adoption has been strong and we’re confident in the network’s growth ahead.

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