Blast announced on Friday the closure of its Ethereum layer 2 network. Operating costs now exceed the revenue generated by the chain, and the team no longer sees “any credible path” to a sust
Blast announced on Friday the closure of its Ethereum layer 2 network. Operating costs now exceed the revenue generated by the chain, and the team no longer sees “any credible path” to a sustainable model. Users have until October 26 to withdraw their assets.
Ethereum layer 2s are going through a turbulent phase since the drop in fees on the main network reduced the size of the pie. Blast is the latest victim, with an announcement released Friday. The network is closing, and users are encouraged to transfer their assets back to Ethereum before October 26.
The team detailed its decision in a message posted on X. “The maintenance costs of Blast exceed the revenues generated by the L2, and we do not see any credible path to an economically sustainable model“, it wrote.
The withdrawal period will be 24 hours, after an approximately one-week suspension while Blast unwraps its assets placed in Lido. After October 26, it will be necessary to interact directly with the bridge contracts on Ethereum.
Blast was not an anonymous project. Behind it is Tieshun “Pacman” Roquerre, founder of the NFT marketplace Blur, which had shaken OpenSea in 2022 with incentives. Unveiled in November 2023 with native yield on ETH and stablecoins and points promising an airdrop, it attracted over 2 billion dollars in deposits before its launch in February 2024.
The rest is more painful. Its locked value peaked around 2.2 billion dollars in June 2024, before melting by more than 98% (DefiLlama data, recorded on October 2). About 32 million dollars remain in its contracts. Blur was not spared either; its locked value fell from about 200 million in early 2024 to 27 million.
Blast joins a growing list. Kinto, another layer 2, closed its doors in fall 2025 after a hack. The market is also focusing on a handful of players. Base, Coinbase’s chain, openly attacks new territories like Robinhood Chain, while smaller networks have neither massive distribution nor their own usage.
Everywhere, the same equation. Revenues depend on activity, costs are largely fixed, and several analysts doubt that most rollups will survive the year. The bet on layer 2s, long driven by incentives and airdrops, is confronted with reality. The future, between closures and absorptions, will be written in Ethereum news.
The deadline first. On October 26, the Blast interface will close withdrawals; afterward, you will need to use the bridge contracts. Beyond this case, the closure reminds us that the question for layer 2s is no longer how much they promise, but how much they generate. Ethereum itself continues its scaling, with a target of 200 million gas per block under study.
