Blast’s locked assets top $1 billion

On December 26, the total value locked in the L2-solution Blast assets surpassed $1 billion.

Launched on November 22 the project is an Ethereum-based Layer-2 network offering a passive yield of 4-5% per year. Yet Blast still lacks any infrastructure beyond a bridging contract.

If the protocol had a mainnet, it would rank second by TVL among Layer-2 networks and sixth among all blockchains.

According to Blast data, the platform counts a little over 85,000 users. That means each user has, on average, about $11,700 locked.

At present the protocol allows depositing through the bridge of ETH, USDC and a number of other assets to earn passive income, but withdrawals are not yet available. They will be opened with the mainnet launch on February 24, 2024.

So far, the $1 billion in user deposits sits on a single multisig wallet with five signatures.

The hype around Blast is fueled by an anticipated airdrop. Eligibility hinges on farming internal points that accrue for deposits and via the referral program.

One of the main sponsors of the L2 network is Paradigm. However, the firm’s head of research, Dan Robinson, criticized the protocol for aggressive marketing centered on token airdrops.

There are a lot of components of Blast that I’m excited about and would be interested in engaging with people on. That said, we at Paradigm think the announcement this week crossed lines in both messaging and execution. For example, we don’t agree with the decision to launch the…

— Dan Robinson (@danrobinson) November 26, 2023

In his view, such tactics “create a bad precedent” and “devalues the work of a serious team”.

Earlier, the founder of Blast, known by the alias Pacman, responded to community concerns and explained how the platform achieves high yields.

In the wake of the project’s announcement and Blur’s listing on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, the NFT marketplace Blur (BLUR), also founded by a co-founder of the farming service, surged 88%.