Nostra (NSTR) Founder David Garai Resigns as CEO of the Starknet-Based DeFi Project

Garai announced his departure on X, stating he's "taking a break for the first time in 4 years."

David Garai, the founder of Nostra (NSTR), has stepped down as CEO of the Starknet-based DeFi project after less than two weeks following the airdrop of the NSTR token.

On X, Garai announced his departure, stating that he is “taking a break for the first time in 4 years.” The former CEO announced that Richard Thomas-Pryce will take over the protocol’s “day-to-day lead” role.

Thomas-Pryce is the head of Tempus Lab, which is the legal entity behind Nostra Labs, according to the website.

“Under [Richard Thomas-Pryce]’s leadership, Nostra and its 12 full-time developers will continue enhancing the product suite for the Super App, with Nostra Earn and STRK liquid staking coming soon,” Garai added.

The App by Nostra

Nostra Finance is a decentralized protocol that is built on Starknet, a layer-2 solution on Ethereum. The website claims to have over $191M in total value locked, but DefiLlama shows a total of $151.36M.

At its peak, Nostra had over $225M in TVL early in June of this year, a few days before the airdrop of NSTR. Since early 2024, the app has seen constant ups and downs in this respective metric.

The app allows users to borrow, swap, and bridge crypto. According to Garai, over the past two and a half years, Nostra has become the largest and most profitable protocol on Starknet, generating $2.5 million in annual revenue.

The Founder Claims He Hasn’t Sold a Single Token

The total supply of NSTR is 100 million tokens, with a current market cap of $9.6 million, according to CoinGecko. All NSTR tokens were unlocked at launch, with 11% airdropped to the community during the token generation event.

The protocol allocated 25% of NSTR’s total supply to the project’s treasury, 14% to future airdrops, 26.2% to investors, and 23.8% to the team. The TGE allocations had no vesting period and were touted as the “fairest launch in crypto.”

Some members of the community have questioned the timing of Garai's resignation, which comes just 11 days after the launch of the NSTR token. Garai clarified that he “hasn't sold a single token.”

However, this statement failed to prevent the price of NSTR from being dumped almost immediately after his resignation.