Troublemaker on the scene? Blur founder brings ‘earn points and recruit people’ tactics to conquer the Layer 2 track again

Notorious Troublemaker Strikes Again Blur Founder Utilizes 'Earn Points and Recruit' Method to Dominate Layer 2 Race

“The only L2 with Ethereum and stablecoin native yield on Ethereum” – some people are excited while others are not convinced.

On November 21st, Blast, a Layer 2 network based on Optimistic Rollup, announced that it has completed a $20 million funding round. The round was led by LianGuairadigm, Standard Crypto, eGirl Capital, and Mechanism Capital, with several angel investors including Andrew Kang, the founder of Lido; Hasu, the strategic advisor of Blur; and Larry Cermak, the CEO of The Block, also participating. Just four hours after this news was released, Blast’s Total Value Locked (TVL) exceeded $6 million.

It’s worth noting that Blast was founded by LianGuaicman, the founder of Blur, and LianGuairadigm and eGirl Capital were the lead and participating investors during Blur’s seed round in March 2022.

According to the team, Blast is positioned as “the only L2 with Ethereum and stablecoin native yield on Ethereum” and they believe this advantage alone can help Blast attract over $20 billion in TVL (although the current total TVL of Ethereum Layer 2 is only $13.87 billion).

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LianGuaicman believes that the two biggest opportunities in the current NFT space are reducing transaction costs and institutional-grade NFT perpetual rights. People have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Gas fees for NFT transactions, and the trading volume of perpetual contracts in the market is six times that of spot trading. These opportunities require the emergence of a Layer 2 solution.

A Unique Native Yield Mechanism

Blast believes that the benchmark interest rate for existing Layer 2 solutions is 0%. By default, the value of users’ assets will depreciate over time. However, on Blast, users’ balances will automatically compound and earn additional Blast rewards.

Specifically, Blast enables native participation in ETH staking, and the staking rewards will be distributed to the users and dApps on Layer 2. If a user has 1 ETH in their Blast wallet, over time it will automatically grow to 1.04, 1.08, 1.12 ETH.

Furthermore, not only ETH on Blast can earn yield, but stablecoins can also do the same. When users bridge stablecoins like USDC, USDT, and DAI to Blast, they will be deposited into on-chain treasuries protocols like MakerDAO, and the yield will be transferred back to Blast users through Blast’s native stablecoin, USDB.

Currently, Blast’s early access activity is already live, and it follows an invitation-based system where all participants will receive Blast point rewards.

Blast’s User Interface

During the early access phase, Blast already supports four languages: English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, making it user-friendly for Chinese users.

Although Blast has established its infrastructure, the development of dApps is still in a very early stage. Currently, the only available feature is “bridging funds into Blast.” Participating in the ecosystem during the first seven days will earn users double points, but withdrawals will only be possible after the mainnet launch in February next year. The launch of dApps will also happen after the mainnet launch (possibly during the testnet phase).

For this reason, Blast has also launched an airdrop reward program specifically for developers, with 50% of the airdrop being allocated to them.

So, currently, user participation in Blast will remain in the stage of simply “recruiting people to earn points and airdrops”.

What is the community’s response?

According to the vision described by LianGuaicman, Blast will support all types of Dapps in the future, such as DEX, NFTFi, SocialFi, and other application scenarios. This design concept has sparked discussion in the community. Huobi incubator researcher 0xLoki believes that staking assets for profit on public chains is not new, but the emergence of Blast can avoid “middlemen profiting from the price difference”.

Sleepy, the founder of NFT project Weirdo Ghost Gang, said, “What makes Blast and other Layer2 projects special is the ability to provide native revenue for ETH and stablecoins. Blast caught my attention.”

However, there are also different voices. Liu Feng, former editor-in-chief of ChainNews, said, “Blast and Blur have the same smell of MLM.” The opening of “points system + invitation code + transparent airdrop” seems to be the routine marketing technique of the investment party, LianGuairadigm.

There are also people who are not buying into Blast’s concept. Investor brain genius believes that LianGuairadigm is “gamifying” unnecessary functionalities in the community, and people will only participate for the airdrops.

In addition, Blast’s birth is due to the investment demand on Blur. Earlier today, Blur announced the opening of Season 2 airdrop claims and the start of Season 3, which will last for 6 months. LianGuaicman, the founder, stated that Blast is providing momentum for Blur’s Season 3 airdrop. The “auto-staking” strategy will undoubtedly bring more users and liquidity to Blur.

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