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

“I have resigned as CEO of Nostra,” Garai posted on X. “I'm taking a lil break for the first time in 4 years and then I will be back. Stay tuned for my future plans.” 

The Nostra app enables users to lend, borrow, swap and bridge cryptocurrencies, backed by developer Nostra Labs. Over the past two and a half years, Garai claimed Nostra has become the largest and most profitable protocol on Starknet, with $2.5 million in annual revenue and more than $180 million in total value locked. Nostra’s current TVL is $153.4 million, according to DeFi Llama data, with a peak of $221.4 million just before the airdrop took place.

Tempus Labs Head of Product Richard Thomas-Pryce will take over as the “day-to-day lead” of Nostra Labs, Garai said. Tempus Labs is the legal entity behind the firm, according to its website.

“Under the leadership of [Richard Thomas-Pryce], Nostra (and its 12 full-time builders) will continue developing the product suite for the Super App, with Nostra Earn coming soon, as well as STRK liquid staking, for which Nostra is well positioned to be the frontrunner,” Garai added.

Garai's resignation comes 11 days after Nostra’s token airdrop

Garai’s decision comes just 11 days after Nostra’s NSTR token went live, with some community members questioning the timing of Garai’s resignation. Garai replied that he hasn’t “sold a single token.”

Garai later provided The Block with an extensive list of team allocation addresses to verify his claim of not selling any tokens. "There is zero correlation between the timing of the resignation and whether the NSTR token was launched unlocked or locked, this is clearly evident by the fact that the team allocation has not been touched," Garai told The Block.

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

A further 25% of NSTR’s total supply was allocated to the project’s treasury, 14% to future airdrops, 26.2% to investors and 23.8% to the team, according to Nostra. The TGE allocations had no vesting period in what the project described as the “fairest launch in crypto.”

Nostra’s token fell around 4% immediately following Garai’s announcement, before recovering slightly. NSTR is currently trading for $0.0967, per CoinGecko data.

NSTR/USD price chart. Image: CoinGecko.

“Starknet will have its time, with crucial upgrades incoming to speed up the network and make it more mature,” Garai concluded. “It's a good time to be cautiously optimistic. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved and what’s to come.”

The Block reached out to Thomas-Pryce for comment.

Updated with comments from Garai.