Blast Struggles After its Highly Anticipated Airdrop

Blast critics are running victory laps as the heavily hyped Layer 2 (L2) experiences an onchain exodus.

The chain’s daily active user (DAU) count is at a new low of roughly 30,000, which is 91% lower than Arbitrum’s 350,000 users and 53% lower than Optimism’s 65,000.

Blast’s TVL is also down over 60% from its all-time high of $2.3 billion set on June 5, now sitting at $875 million, according to DeFiLlama.

In addition to a user drop-off, Blast is also losing some of its community to competitors. PacMoon, the largest memecoin on Blast, recently announced its migration to Solana. Pacmoon’s PAC token is down over 80%, falling to a $4 million market capitalization from its June highs of $23 million.

PacMoon team member Lamboland took to social media and said “…building on Blast has always been an uphill battle for us. We think that tokens, community, and culture are what make a blockchain successful. However, Blast never focused on that. In fact, they created a system where native tokens on Blast are actively disincentivized and they provided zero social support.”

The BLAST token has taken a beating as well. After reaching a fully diluted valuation of $2.9 billion on its opening day, the token price is down 63% from its high.

Blast’s top dApps have also felt the weight of the ecosystem’s sentiment change. The TVL of Thruster, the top decentralized exchange (DEX) on Blast, dropped 54% since its June 26 airdrop, to $208 million from $457 million. Daily active users are down to as few as 1,500 DAU on Aug. 11 according to TokenTerminal, from fluctuating between 8,000 and 15,000 during May and June.

The Blast team did not immediately respond to The Defiant’s request for comment.

Airdrop Incentives Take Their Toll

During its pre-token generation event (TGE) period, Blast was one of the most highly anticipated airdrops in DeFi, alongside LayerZero and ZkSync, with many farmers calling for a $10 billion valuation. After it opened at far below expectations, most farmers did not hesitate to dump their allocations.

The Blast ecosystem’s harsh drawdown is indicative of DeFi’s mercenary airdrop farming scene. As shown by many of its predecessors, when incentives dry up, the fallout can be intense.

But there’s also hope for recovery.

Arbitrum experienced a similar phenomenon after its airdrop event in March of 2023, albeit on a delayed timeline.

Shortly after the ARB TGE, Arbitrum reached a TVL of $2.4 billion, which plummeted 36% to $1.6 billion over the next 4 months. Arbitrum’s daily users fell by as much as 65% to a low of 82,000 in October 2023 from roughly 250,000 daily users at the end of April 2023 users.

After the post TGE shakeout period, Arbitrum went on to solidify its place as the number one L2 by TVL with $2.7 billion, a 62% increase from its low. It is currently 44% larger than its closest competitor, Base.

While chain metrics may not indicate it, Blast’s season 2 of airdrop farming is ongoing. Season 2 is expected to conclude in June 2025, and features points and gold similar to its season 1.