Following the launch of the mainnet on February 29th at 9:00 pm UTC, approximately $400 million in Ether (ETH) has been withdrawn from the Ethereum layer-2 network Blast. This has unlocked around $2.3 billion in staked crypto that was previously locked up on the network. Blast, which is an optimistic rollup blockchain scaler, offers users an annual percentage yield of up to 5% on Ether and stablecoins held on the network. This yield is generated from staked ETH and United States Treasury Bills (T-Bills) managed by MakerDAO, the creator of the Dai stablecoin. Prior to the mainnet launch, the crypto sent to the network was locked, preventing its 180,000 users from withdrawing their funds. Blast’s total value locked (TVL) reached a high of $2.27 billion on February 29th but has since fallen to $1.87 billion after the launch, with nearly $400 million being withdrawn. The network had achieved its $2 billion TVL milestone for the first time a few days earlier on February 27th. Airdrop hunters have been flocking to the network, hoping to receive a Blast token that the team has announced will be distributed in May. However, Blast’s launch has not been without controversy. Dan Robinson, the research head at Paradigm, a seed investor in Blast, criticized the decision to launch the bridge before the L2 and the three-month withdrawal restriction, stating that it sets a bad precedent for other projects. Additionally, an alleged exit scam took place on February 26th when a gambling protocol called “Risk on Blast” disappeared with 420 ETH, equivalent to around $1.25 million at the time, which had been collected from users for its RISK presale token. The launch of Blast has sparked discussion about the potential risks and benefits of Ethereum restaking.
$2.3B worth of staked crypto unleashed as Blast initiates Ethereum L2 mainnet