Blast Mainnet Launched - A New Layer2 Star with A Different Approach?

TD;LR

In less than five months, attracting $2.3 billion in TVL - if you pay attention to cryptocurrency information, you must have heard of the trend sparked by Blast.

The team of Blast is also a leading NFT market, while the operational team of Blur is very skilled in grasping and creating hot topics, capturing players’ attention with innovative narratives. We can also glimpse some of the success of Blast.

On February 29, Blast launched the Ethereum L2 mainnet, unlocking $2.3 billion in collateralized cryptocurrency. Since then, approximately 180,000 Blast users have withdrawn $400 million from the network.

How did this young L2 project break through the bull market? What potential and risks does it have, and what actions have been taken? We can analyze it briefly.

Blast’s Strategy

According to DeFiLlama’s data, the total value locked in by Blast (TVL) reached a high of $2.27 billion on February 29 and decreased by 17.5%. After the launch of the mainnet, it has dropped to $1.87 billion, with less than $400 million being extracted.

Returning to November, when the news of the entire Blast project was just announced, it is not difficult to find that the Blast team is more adept at strategy, or marketing tactics, compared to technical support and other aspects. Firstly, as a new project of the Blur team and released at the same time as the third round of BLUR airdrops at that time, Blast had a considerable level of exposure.

On this basis, during the testing phase, Blast took a different approach by using the “invitation system,” meaning you need to enter an invitation code to participate in the network. This may seem to set a threshold, but it also creates curiosity and stickiness among users. Combined with the system of “inviting and teaming up can help you accumulate points more efficiently,” it will also make users more proactive and form a dissemination effect.

Afterward, Blast continued to actively maintain and manage its ecosystem, with the greatest effort being to launch the “Big Bang” competition. This developer-centered competition lasted from January 16 to February 18, with 3000 projects participating and competing to become one of the first projects to be released on the mainnet.

This competition provides a starting opportunity for the accumulated TVL of Blast, a significant allocation of upcoming airdrops, and direct and ongoing support from Blast investors and operators.

Source: blast

The Characteristics of Blast

The native revenue and gas cost-sharing function of Blast can be said to be its distinctive features. That is to say, Blast is currently the L2 that can directly earn ETH and stablecoins.

Blast’s revenue comes from ETH valuation and RWA protocol. The benefits generated by these decentralized protocols will be automatically returned to Blast users. The default interest rate for other L2 is 0%. On Blast, the default interest rate for ETH is 4%, and the default interest rate for stablecoins is 5%. By integrating with Lido and Maker DAO in the backend, these assets can be located anywhere on the chain.

Blast also shares the net income from Gas fees with the dapp that generated these expenses, providing developers with another source of income that can be utilized. The integration of this incentive measure makes L2 a place for idle funds of users, and also allows developers to benefit from the contribution of smart contracts directly.

Mainstream Airdrop Projects

There are already many projects on Blast that have been explicitly airdropped. Among them, DeFi tools, DEX, and other interactive behaviors such as using their platforms and participating in communities can help players accumulate Blast or project points, which can be converted into later airdrops.

BlasterSwap

The first spot trading and Launchpad platform. Get tokens by connecting to a wallet, Twitter, following, and joining Discord. Blaster is currently in the early bird registration period, and registering, donating to Blaster, and airdropping can earn 300 token rewards.

Ring protocol

The spot trading platform has launched DEX “Ring exchange,” which has passed the testnet and provides functions such as exchange, Launchpad, and liquidity.

SynFutures

SynFutures is a DEX focused on cryptocurrency perpetual futures trading, which has launched its latest version, V3, on Ethereum and a point reward program called Oyster Odyssey. SynFutures stated that its V3 users will also be eligible for the upcoming Blast airdrop.

Blast off

The official positioning is “a local launch platform and yield aggregator based on returns” to unlock idle returns.

MonoSwap

Monoswap is another spot trading platform that launches MUSD stablecoins, providing clear airdrop expectations.

Source: Monoswap

Of course, these are only a few projects belonging to the Blast ecosystem, with as many as 47 winners in the Big Bang competition alone. They were quite early, and although they were openly airdropped or even encouraged by the project team, it does not mean they are safe. There is no endorsement for these projects; Therefore, players who intend to participate in the interaction must pay more attention to the safety of their own assets.

Risks and Potential Issues

Dan Robinson, the research director of Paradigm, a seed investor for Blast, wrote in an article on November X that the venture capital firm disagrees with Blast’s decision to “initiate bridging before L2 or not allow withdrawals for three months,” stating that it “sets a bad precedent for other projects.”

This kind of voice is not uncommon, and many people believe that Blast’s focus is only on packaging it with seemingly novel vocabulary to lock in user funds, causing a temporary data boom.

Meanwhile, the risk of fraud is not non-existent. On February 26, a gambling protocol called “Risk on Blast” used 420 ETH of user funds to raise funds for its pre-sale tokens for market promotion, resulting in the first suspected exit scam.

Conclusion

Overall, the concept of Blast is very attractive and has garnered widespread participation from over 180,000 users, which is by no means a small number. However, there are also some issues, such as dissatisfaction among some users after the mainnet was launched today, due to the high cost of migrating Gas, the long time required for bridging withdrawals, and issues such as point inflation. Whether Blast has the potential for sustainable development also depends on whether the team can continuously maintain and correct issues.

Although the current data is very impressive, its sustainability is still unknown. It is expected that Blast will be airdropped in May, and we will continue to observe and follow up on new announcements from the project team.