Author: Nancy, PANews

The Layer2 track has welcomed a new player. On November 20th, as Blur opened the application for the 2nd season airdrop, its founder Pacman made a major announcement of the establishment of a new company, Blast, to build a universal Layer2, and raised $40 million for the Blur ecosystem.

Blast is a Layer2 network based on Optimistic Rollup, created by Pacman and a team with extensive experience at MakerDAO, MIT, Yale University, and Seoul National University. Currently, Blast's contributors have received $20 million in funding from investment institutions Paradigm, Standard Crypto, eGirl Capital, as well as angel investors including Andrew Kang, co-founder of Mechanism Capital, strategic advisor Hasu from Lido, and The Block CEO Larry Cermak. Paradigm and eGirl Capital are also investors in Blur.

Blast is the only Ethereum Layer2 with native income for ETH and stablecoins, while the current benchmark interest rate for existing Layer2 is 0%. According to reports, Blast's native participation in ETH staking will return profits to users and DApps on Layer2. On Blast, users' balances will automatically compound and earn additional Blast rewards. Specifically, when users bridge ETH or stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, and DAI to Blast, it will be deposited into protocols such as MakerDAO's on-chain treasury, and the profits will be returned to Blast users through Blast's automatic basic stablecoin USDB. Blast believes that this advantage alone can attract $20 billion in liquidity.

Blast has adopted a similar airdrop strategy to projects like Blur, attracting users to participate through long-term point incentives and token airdrops. The Blast website shows that the community airdrop will be divided into early members (50%) and developers (50%).

Users can participate in the early airdrop activity by bridging to Blast and inviting friends, but they need to complete steps such as binding an X account, joining the official community, and connecting a wallet to claim the airdrop. According to Blast's current airdrop rules, in addition to receiving double points for bridging any amount within 7 days (which can only be withdrawn after the mainnet is launched), Blast also introduces a social effect-based invitation gameplay, where different degrees of bonus points can be obtained by inviting users and invitees, especially inviting large holders can earn more points and improve their ranking on the leaderboard.

Furthermore, users can also form teams through invitations, and when the team has 5 ETH, they can unlock super spins (10 times the normal spins) and an additional 10 invitation slots.

Developers participating in the airdrop activity will need to wait for the launch of Blast's testnet in January next year. For Layer2 projects that have not yet issued tokens, Blast's real money may attract many developers. It should be noted that currently, only invited participants can experience Blast, and they can earn profits (4% for ETH + 5% for stablecoins) and receive Blast point rewards before the mainnet is launched in February 2024. All airdrop points will be redeemed in May 2024.

Regarding the launch of Blast, Pacman explained on X, "Reducing transaction costs and institutional-grade NFTs are the two major opportunities for the development of NFTs. In the past, GAS for NFT transactions has cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and perpetual trading volume is 6 times that of spot trading, but these opportunities require Layer2. At the same time, the Blur protocol faces another problem, with $100 million TVL in the Blur pool not generating profits, which means that Blur users are suffering losses due to the depreciation of NFTs. With in-depth research, I realized that almost all dApps on the chain have such problems. A new Layer2 that provides native income for dApps and users can allow the Blur ecosystem to avoid asset depreciation, reduce NFT transaction costs, and launch NFT perps, which will promote the development of all dApps including Blur."

Pacman also believes that Layer2 is not just an execution environment, but also a liquidity environment. A Layer2 with native income opens up possibilities for the entire on-chain economy. Perpetual products, indices, loans, NFTs, and even SocialFi will all benefit from this. Pacman also stated, "Blast is providing momentum for the third season airdrop of Blur, and the success of this product will elevate the status of the Blur community, and vice versa." Pacman also stated that he will personally oversee the development of both the Blur and Blast projects.

In addition, Pacman also announced that he has raised $40 million to contribute to the Blur ecosystem. This funding will not only be used to build NFT Layer2 applications, but will also continue to drive the development of NFTs on the ETH Layer1.

Following the precedent of Blur's airdrop feast, Blast is attracting a large number of community members to participate, and invitation codes are flooding social platforms. As of the publication, the Blast contract address holds assets worth over 4700 ETH.

Opinions within the community about Blast's launch are mixed. Huobi Incubator researcher 0xLoki stated that all underlying assets on Blast exist in the form of ETH staking or DeFi protocols. In fact, many underlying assets on public chains used to earn interest, but the profits would be privately taken by the public chain/asset issuer. Blast is now removing the middleman to make a profit.

However, Blast's gameplay has also been criticized for lacking creativity. Analyst @陈剑Jason pointed out that although Blast emphasizes being a "Layer2 that can help users make money," in reality, when users deposit money into Blast, the platform transfers the money to Layer1, which is Ethereum, and stakes it in Lido, then returns the interest earned to the user, under the guise of "helping users make money." However, what is the difference between this and users directly staking in Lido (except) that they can earn some additional Blast points? Blast fully implements the gameplay of Blur.

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