Author: Nancy, PANews
The Layer2 track has welcomed a new player. On November 20, when Blur opened its second season airdrop application, its founder Pacman announced the establishment of a new company Blast to build a universal Layer2 and raise $40 million for the Blur ecosystem.
According to reports, Blast is a Layer2 network based on Optimistic Rollup, created by Pacman and a team with rich experience in MakerDAO, MIT, Yale University, and Seoul National University. At present, Blast contributors have received $20 million in financing from investment institutions Paradigm, Standard Crypto, eGirl Capital, and angel investors such as Mechanism Capital co-founder Andrew Kang, Lido strategic advisor Hasu, and The Block CEO Larry Cermak. Among them, Paradigm and eGirl Capital are also investors in Blur.
Blast is also the only Ethereum Layer2 with native returns on ETH and stablecoins, while the existing Layer2 has a base interest rate of 0%. It is reported that Blast natively participates in ETH staking, and the staking income will be returned to Layer2 users and DApps. On Blast, users' balances will automatically compound and earn additional Blast rewards. Specifically, when users cross-chain ETH or stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, and DAI to Blast, it will be deposited in on-chain treasury protocols such as MakerDAO, and the income will be transmitted back to Blast users through Blast's automatic base stablecoin USDB. Blast believes that this advantage alone can attract $20 billion in liquidity.
Blast has adopted an airdrop strategy similar to projects such as Blur, attracting user participation through long-term point incentives and token airdrop expectations. Blast's official website shows that Blast's community airdrop will be divided into two parts: early members (50%) and developers (50%).
Among them, users can bridge to Blast and invite friends to participate in the early airdrop activities, but they need to complete the steps of binding X account, joining the official community and connecting the wallet to receive the airdrop. According to the current Blast airdrop rules, in addition to users bridging any amount within 7 days to get double points (can only be withdrawn after the main network is launched), Blast also introduces an invitation game with social effects, which can obtain different levels of reward points when inviting users and invited users obtain points, especially inviting large users can get more points and improve the ranking of the leaderboard.
Not only that, users can also form groups through invitations. When the group has 5 ETH, they can unlock super spins (10 times the normal spins) and an additional 10 invitations.
Developers can only participate in the airdrop after the launch of the Blast testnet in January next year. For Layer2, which has not yet issued tokens, Blast's real money may attract many developers. It should be noted that Blast is currently only open to invitation-only participants. They can earn income (4% for ETH + 5% for stablecoins) and receive Blast points before the launch of the mainnet in February 2024. All airdrop points will be redeemed in May 2024.
As for the reason for the launch of Blast, Pacman explained in an article on X that "reducing transaction costs and institutional-level NFTs are two major opportunities for the development of NFTs. In the past, NFT transactions have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in GAS, and the perpetual transaction volume is 6 times the spot transaction volume, but these opportunities require Layer2. At the same time, the Blur protocol faces another problem. There is $100 million of TVL in the Blur pool that is not profitable, which means that Blur users are losing money due to the depreciation of NFTs. As I delved deeper, I realized that almost all dApps on the chain have such problems. The new Layer2 that provides native income to dApps and users allows 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.
At the same time, Pacman believes that Layer2 is not just an execution environment, but an execution and liquidity environment. Layer2 with native returns will open up possibilities for the entire on-chain economy. Perpetual products, indexes, loans, NFTs and even SocialFi will benefit from it. Pacman also said, "Blast is powering the third season of Blur's airdrop. The success of this product will enhance the status of the Blur community, and vice versa." Pacman also said that he will personally oversee the development of both Blur and Blast projects.
In addition, Pacman also announced that it has raised $40 million to contribute to the Blur ecosystem. In addition to being used to build NFT's Layer2 applications, this part of the funds will continue to promote the development of NFT on ETH Layer1.
Following the precedent of Blur’s airdrop, Blast is attracting a large number of community members to participate, and the invitation code is flooding the social platforms. As of the time of writing, the Blast contract address has held assets worth more than 4,700 ETH.
The community has different views on the launch of Blast. Huobi Incubator researcher 0xLoki said that all underlying assets on Blast are in the form of interest-bearing ETH Staking or DeFi protocols. In fact, many underlying assets of public chains also generate interest in the past, but the income will be embezzled by the public chain/asset issuer. Blast now wants to eliminate the middleman and make a profit from the price difference.
However, Blast's gameplay has also been questioned for its lack of creativity. For example, analyst @陈剑Jason pointed out that although Blast focuses on "Layer 2 that can help users make money", in fact, after users deposit money into Blast, the platform transfers the money to Layer 1, which is Ethereum, for staking and stores it in Lido, and then returns the interest earned to the users. It calls it "helping users make money", but what is the difference between this and users directly staking at Lido? (It's just) they will earn more Blast points. Blast has fully implemented Blur's gameplay.
