Layer-2 network Starknet will open staking on its ecosystem by the end of 2024, the developer firm StarkWare shared on Wednesday. The news was announced at the Ethereum Community Conference in Brussels, Belgium, by the company’s CEO Eli Ben-Sasson.

Ben-Sasson submitted a Starknet Improvement Proposal to the community which suggests that users can choose whether they would like to become a staker, with rewards for participation to be proportional to the amount of STRK tokens staked.

Stakers will have to lock their tokens for a 21-day period before being allowed to withdraw their funds, according to a press release shared with CoinDesk.

If the proposal is approved by the community, a testnet for staking on Starknet will go out soon, with staking coming to mainnet by the last quarter of 2024.

StarkWare, the main development firm behind Starknet, shared that staking will be rolled out in several phases. “In the first main stage, stakers will need to connect to Starknet, interact with the staking contracts, and follow the proposed protocol rules to stake,” the press release said. Teams at StarkWare and Starknet Foundation will study their users’ staking habits to determine later staking mechanism updates.

“In subsequent stages, stakers will need, in real time, to provide attestations to the content of blocks,” StarkWare added. “Then in the final stage, stakers will be performing sequencing and proving activities to fully secure the network.”

“As Starknet continues its decentralized journey, StarkWare is excited to propose the first stage of staking,” Ben-Sasson said in the press release. “This is an important step in building the staking community and technology, offering new opportunities for users and developers.”

Read more: Starknet Blockchain Plans Much-Awaited Airdrop of New STRK Tokens Next Week