Blast To Shut Down After Costs Outpace Revenue

Ethereum layer-2 network Blast will shut down after the cost of operating the chain exceeded its revenue. Users have until Oct. 26 to withdraw their assets through Blast’s interface and move them to the Ethereum mainnet.

In a post on X, the Blast team wrote that it could not find a “credible path” to making the network economically sustainable. The network will reduce its withdrawal delay to 24 hours, but withdrawals will be temporarily unavailable while Blast unwinds its Lido-related assets. The process is expected to take about a week.

After Oct. 26, users will still be able to access their assets, but they will need to interact directly with Blast’s bridge contracts on Ethereum. Blast will publish instructions before the deadline and has urged users to transfer their assets to the mainnet.

“We launched Blast with the goal of building a self-sustaining chain for users and developers,” the team wrote. “Unfortunately, the economics of operating the chain no longer make sense.”

Tieshun “Pacman” Roquerre, who founded the NFT marketplace Blur, launched Blast in November 2023. The network offered yield on Ether and stablecoins, as well as a points program linked to a planned token airdrop. It attracted more than $2 billion in deposits before its mainnet launched in February 2024.

Blast’s decentralized finance total value locked reached about $2.2 billion in June 2024, according to DeFiLlama data. It has since fallen by more than 98%. Blur’s total value locked has also declined, from more than $200 million in early 2024 to about $27 million.