Hi @Marroz, @kebitorrent,
This is a good and important discussion, so let me step in and clarify a few things, because some of the disagreement rests on how Astar and Startale actually relate. Once that’s clear, the strategy questions get easier to answer.
Astar Foundation and Startale are not the same thing, and Astar is not a part of Startale.
We laid this out in detail here: The Astar Collective and its Contributors. The short version:
- The Astar Foundation provides long-term stewardship for Astar. It proposes and drives the direction it believes is best for the ecosystem, and carries the work across roadmap, branding, marketing, treasury, token sustainability, and product. It stewards and proposes; it doesn’t rule by itself.
- Astar is a governed ecosystem, the Collective. Direction is set together with its governance bodies, the Main Council, the Finance Committee, the Community Council, and the Technical Committee, and the community. The Foundation proposes; the Collective governs.
- Startale is a contributor and a business, technical, and infrastructure partner. It is not the decision-maker for Astar.
- Soneium (Sony + Startale), Strium, the Startale App, and Startale’s stablecoin (JPYSC) are Startale’s products, not Astar’s. Astar collaborates with them where it creates real value, but it does not control them, and they are not part of ASTR.
@kebitorrent, you’re actually right on this point: Sota has described Astar and Soneium as distinct trajectories, and that’s consistent with what I’m describing here. Sota remains Astar’s founder and part of the direction the Foundation proposes, but that direction is set as a collective, through Astar’s governance, not handed down by any single person or entity. How often any one person mentions Astar publicly isn’t the measure of commitment; the team, the governance, and the shipped work are.
This matters directly for one of Marroz’s points. The idea that “the only way to invest in Startale is through ASTR” is not a framing we can or should use, because it isn’t accurate. ASTR is the token of Astar. It is not a claim on Soneium, Strium, the Startale App, or anything else under Startale. Communicating it that way would mislead holders about what they actually own, and that’s the opposite of what we want. So while I understand the instinct to bundle everything into one big story, doing that would misrepresent ASTR, not strengthen it.
That said, @Marroz, your underlying point is fair and I won’t dodge it: Astar needs a sharper, more ambitious narrative, and that’s on us. Something I’m working on addressing. Where I’d push back is on the shape. The answer isn’t to position Astar as one chain inside a Startale bundle. It’s to tell Astar’s own story well: consumer finance onchain, starting from Japan, with ASTR at the center of the value it creates. You actually pointed at this yourself, if the team building Astar is Astar’s own, then telling Astar’s own story is the right move, not borrowing someone else’s.
On the engineering and “one developer on GitHub.”
I understand why that looks alarming, but it’s a visibility artifact, not the real picture. What’s public right now is the Astar L1 core repository, and L1 is deliberately in a stability and hardening phase, not a feature-expansion one. We’ve said so publicly: we’re cleaning up and securing the base layer, for example the WASM smart contract sunset and the runtime 2204 upgrade to slot-based AURA consensus for better fork resistance. A focused, stable core chain is supposed to look quiet on the surface; a base layer that needs constant churn is usually the more worrying sign.
The bulk of the Foundation’s engineering effort is on the products, AstarFi above all, plus the surfaces around it. Those repositories aren’t public yet, which is normal for pre-launch products, so that work simply isn’t visible in the L1 repo you’re looking at. The Foundation is a self-sufficient entity with its own end-to-end team across engineering, product, BD, marketing, finance, and community. There is a dedicated team on Astar.
That also answers Marroz’s “two scenarios” directly: it isn’t a case of the team working only for Startale, or being caught in the middle. The Foundation has its own people building Astar’s own products, while Startale contributes on infrastructure and technical work. Both are true at once.
On the worry about more tokens diluting holders.
I can’t speak for Startale’s own token decisions, those are theirs. But on the Astar side, the design is built to protect ASTR holders, not dilute them: Tokenomics 3.0 set a fixed maximum supply with decaying emissions, and the value-capture framework is meant to route ecosystem activity back into ASTR rather than spread it across new assets. ASTR remains the primary token. Any additional opportunity, including Burndrop, is built on top of ASTR, not a replacement for it or an exit from it.
On communication.
Maarten leads the Astar Foundation, that hasn’t changed, and the direction we’ve described is the vision the Foundation is championing for the ecosystem. The fair criticism here isn’t whether there’s a vision or a team; it’s how loudly we’ve communicated. You’re right that we’ve been too quiet on the forum, and these replies are part of fixing that. Hold us to it.
Keep this coming. This is exactly the kind of pressure that’s useful, and I’d rather have it in the open than not.
Gaius_sama 
Astar Foundation