Layer-2 Blast Calls for $20 Million in Capital

According to the announcement on November 21, The layer-2 Blast project has just announced the successful raising of $20 million in investment from Paradigm, Standard Crypto, and eGirl Capital, along with the participation of many prominent individuals in the crypto community on Twitter.

Blast is built on Optimistic Rollups technology, similar to Arbitrum and Optimism, and is compatible with the EVM to easily connect with investors and dApps on Ethereum. The Blast development team includes Pacman, the founder of the NFT platform Blur, and former employees of MakerDAO, MIT alumni, and Seoul National University alumni.

Blast is created to promote interest-bearing staking activities on the Ethereum (ETH) network. The project claims that while Ethereum provides a basic interest rate of 3-4% through ETH staking, Blast will be the first layer-2 solution to offer additional interest to encourage people to hold ETH rather than keeping money on layer-1.

When users hold assets on Blast, their balances will accumulate, and interest will be calculated. ETH sent on Blast will be used to participate in ETH staking through Lido, then receive shared block rewards with users.

The baseline interest rate on existing L2s is 0%, so by default the value of your assets depreciate over time.

Blast is the first L2 with native yield. On Blast, your balance compounds automatically, and earns Blast rewards on top. pic.twitter.com/donh7jsxUL

— Blast (@blast) November 20, 2023

Blast also supports sending popular stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, and DAI. Stablecoins will be used to send on protocols holding US Treasury bonds, such as MakerDAO, and profits will be redistributed to users through a stablecoin called USDB.

The project plans to open a limited experience portal for users receiving invitations, with the current interest rates being 4% for ETH and 5% for stablecoins, along with Blast Point rewards.

Blast is scheduled to deploy the testnet in January 2024 and the mainnet in February 2024. Blast Point rewards will be used to calculate the criteria for the project’s token airdrop. Blast Points can be collected from the amount bridged from Ethereum to Blast and the number of invited users to experience layer-2.

The airdrop will include 50% for early users and 50% for dApp developers on the platform, with dApps receiving the airdrop when the testnet is launched in January, while users have to wait until May 2024 to exchange points for tokens.

As of 9:30 AM on November 21, nearly $5 million in ETH and stablecoins have been bridged from Ethereum to Blast.”