Blast Token Surges 40% After $2 Billion Airdrop

Author: Tom Mitchelhill, CoinTelegraph; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Blast (BLAST), the long-awaited native token of the Ethereum Layer 2 network, has surged 40% since its launch, outperforming other high-profile airdrops that have been listed in recent weeks.

According to aggregated data from Ambient Finance and perps trading platform Aevo,

BLAST was issued at a price of $0.02 per token, with a fully diluted value (FDV) of $2 billion at the time of issuance.

As of the time of publishing this article, the price of BLAST has risen by a little over 40% to $0.0281, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

The blast token is up 40% since its launch. Source: CoinMarketCap

It stands in stark contrast to recent high-profile token launches, including Ethereum Layer 2 network zkSync (ZK) and cross-chain interoperability LayerZero (ZRO). Both of these tokens are down 46% and 43% respectively since their launch.

The airdrop released 17% of BLAST’s total supply, with 7% going to users who began bridging Ethereum or USD to the network on Blast (USDB) late last year.

Another 7% was allocated to users who “contributed to the success” of decentralized applications (DApps) on the network, while 3% went to the Blur Foundation for future airdrops to its community.

The airdrop drew some criticism from cryptocurrency market commentators on X, with most arguing that the airdrop’s valuation was lower than they had expected. Arthur Cheong, co-founder of cryptocurrency investment firm DeFiance Capital, said BLAST’s $2 billion FDV was surprising as he expected the value to be closer to the $5 billion mark.

Source: Arthur

The Blast network, co-founded by Blur founder Tieshun Roquerre, more commonly known by his alias PacMan, was criticized by its seed investors last November for lacking sufficient functionality to justify a one-way bridge mechanism that kept users locking up their ETH for months.

Blast Airdrop Attracts Scams

Like several other high-profile airdrops this year, including one from cross-chain bridge protocol Wormhole, Blast’s airdrop attracted a large number of scammers from all over X.

Scammers often choose large-scale airdrops to pose as legitimate impersonators, as airdrops typically require cryptocurrency users to connect their wallets and sign transactions to claim their allotment of tokens.

Crypto security service Scam Sniffer discovered that one user fell victim to the Blast airdrop scam, losing more than $217,000 after signing multiple phishing signatures.

Source: Scam Sniffer