Ethereum Layer 2 scaling network Blast has announced plans to shut down its operations, citing unsustainable operating costs that exceed the platform’s revenue generation. The project’s development team disclosed the decision via social media, acknowledging that maintaining the chain’s infrastructure has become financially unviable and stating that they see no credible path toward long-term economic sustainability.
The announcement marks a dramatic decline for the project, which originally launched in November 2023 following a $20 million funding round led by venture capital firms Paradigm and Standard Crypto. Designed to offer native yield for Ether and stablecoins through staking and real-world asset protocols, Blast rapidly accumulated over $2 billion in total value locked across nearly 200,000 early-access users prior to its mainnet launch in February 2024. According to data from DeFiLlama, the network’s total value locked has since plummeted to approximately $32 million.
Following the announcement, the network’s native BLAST token experienced a sharp sell-off, declining 17% in Friday trading and reducing its market capitalization to roughly $23 million.
To facilitate the closure, Blast has initiated an asset offloading process and is urging users to migrate their funds back to the Ethereum mainnet. The platform is currently withdrawing its staked assets from Lido—a process expected to take roughly one week, during which user withdrawals will be temporarily suspended. Once completed, normal withdrawals will resume with a 24-hour delay through Blast’s standard Web interface until October 26. After that deadline, users will be required to interact directly with Blast’s smart bridge contracts on Ethereum to recover their assets.
