How to TradeBLAST(BLAST)

Tieshun 'Pacman' Roquerre launched Blast on November 21, 2023, raising $20M from Paradigm and Standard Crypto in a seed round. Within 48 hours, TVL hit $230M, and within one week, it surged past $600M, surpassing Coinbase's Base which took months to reach that milestone.

Dan Robinson, Head of Research at Paradigm (an investor in Blast), wrote on X that Blast's launch 'crossed lines in both messaging and execution.' This became an unusual drama when a lead investor publicly criticized their own project.

Blast recorded a TVL of $1 billion in just 35 days, the fastest in blockchain history according to Coin98 Analytics. At that time, Blast became the 3rd largest holder of stETH, trailing only the AAVE and wstETH contracts.

Blast officially launched its mainnet on February 29, 2024, with a TVL exceeding $2 billion on launch day. It became the 2nd largest Ethereum L2, surpassing Optimism. Users were able to withdraw funds for the first time after being locked for 3 months since their initial bridge.

Blast distributed the BLAST token airdrop on June 26, 2024, totaling 17% of the supply: 7% for ETH/USDB bridgers, 7% for DApp contributors, and 3% for the Blur Foundation. TVL peaked at $2.3 billion during this period.

Following the airdrop, Blast's TVL fell from $2.3 billion in June 2024 to just $65 million, a drop of over 97%. This occurred as investors who entered to 'farm' the airdrop withdrew their funds after receiving tokens, becoming a classic case study of 'mercenary liquidity' in DeFi.

In April 2025, a massive unlock of 875 million tokens entered the system. Meanwhile, the Blast team is developing 'Phase 2' to transform Blast into a full-stack chain with a native wallet and multisig capabilities, following the cancellation of a partnership plan with Safe in May 2025.