Table of Contents:

· Support Faction: Blast "Really Nothing", but does not affect users' earnings

· Rational Faction: Blast is not L2, there may be benefits but it cannot go far

Since this week, along with the continuous rise of the circulation of the project Blast launched by the founder of Blur, Pacman, Blast has also ignited a heat bomb in the cryptocurrency industry community. According to DeBank data on November 23, the total value of assets held by the Blast contract address has exceeded 300 million US dollars. Among them, ETH worth 257 million US dollars was deposited into the Lido protocol, and 41.65 million US dollars of DAI was deposited into the Maker protocol. November 23.

In fact, due to the support of top VCs like Paradigm and Blur founder Pacman, Blast has been warmly welcomed by the cryptocurrency community since announcing its $20 million financing on November 21st. Many community KOLs have also launched Blast gameplay and tutorials. However, at the same time, many people have pointed out that Blast's mechanism is not the same as the L2 it claims to be (Blast's official social account handle @Blast_L2 also includes the L2 suffix).

On one side are encouragers, and on the other side are objective analysts. At first, the two sides were not clearly distinguished, and even many people who proposed objective analysis still chose to participate in the Blast project. However, in the past two days, according to observations by BlockBeats, discussions about Blast in the cryptocurrency industry on social media platforms have visibly intensified.

Supporter: Blast "Really Nothing", but it doesn't affect users' earnings

The community KOL, Brother Leon Aus (@BroLeonAus), may be considered a "die-hard fan" of Blast. Since Blast's official announcement on November 21st, Brother Leon Aus has actively encouraged members to "research Iron Smooth's routines and make money together".

On November 24th, amidst various controversies, Brother Leon from Tuao Dashi actively participated in the discussion and stated that "Blast currently has nothing and is not halal", but Blast is excellent in terms of its scoring system, catching people's attention, and prioritizing marketing.

At the same time, he also stated that he had transferred all the ETH stored in ether.fi to Blast: "If I get Rug pulled, I believe the industry needs Ponzi to progress."

Meanwhile, NDV, a cryptocurrency fund co-founder, and NFT whale Christian (@Christianeth) announced on social media that they have deposited over 500 ETH into Blast, following an invitation from another well-known NFT whale, dingaling. Christian also expressed high expectations for Blast's performance in the coming year.

Lido DeFi expansion leader Seraphim (@MacroMate8) is not as aggressive as Brother Tuao Dashi, but he believes that the wave brought by Blast will become the direction leading the future transformation of L2.

On the day Blast was launched, the circulation exceeded $30 million. Seraphim released a statement pointing out that a year ago, there was not as much competition in L2, so no one cared about L2. However, with the introduction of Blast, L2 needs to provide returns above the risk-free collateral rate in order to compete, not just airdrops for users.

Rationalists: Blast is not L2, there may be some benefits but it is not sustainable in the long run

除了直接开冲的支持者，还存在一种较为温和的理性派。他们主要就 Blast 的技术和机制进行探讨，同时纠正了广大用户被 Blast 官方带偏的认知误区，告知广大用户 Blast 并非 L2，以及 Blast 可能存在的风险。但其中还有人在指出 Blast 问题的同时，也「真香」了。

Except for the supporters who directly charge forward, there is also a more moderate and rational group. They mainly discuss the technology and mechanism of Blast, while correcting the cognitive misunderstandings that many users have been led astray by the Blast official, informing users that Blast is not L2, and the potential risks of Blast. However, some people also "enjoyed the fragrance" while pointing out the problems with Blast.

Related reading: "Why can Blast make L2 so anxious when it is bitten back by PUA?"

November 23rd, Ye Zhang, co-founder of Layer 2 network Scroll (@yezhang1998), posted on social media that projects like Blast are not necessarily a bad thing. They show people how much TVL they can get once L2 decides to fulfill the airdrop expectations. Any L2 can do the exact same thing, but it cannot truly help drive any real growth and long-term effects.

Arbitrum's parent company, OffChain Labs, CEO Steven Goldfeder (@sgoldfed), is saddened by the misuse of the term L2 for marketing/growth by many. At the same time, he points out that when we market a single node chain as an Ethereum L2, "we remain silent, we create a trend," and now this trend has become even bigger.

We have created a monster. It's not too late to solve this problem, but we need to have a very open and honest community dialogue about what L2 is and which chains are actually protected by Ethereum.

Polygon Labs developer relations engineer Jarrod Watts (@jarrodWattsDev) also pointed out that the Blast contract is an upgradable contract controlled by a 3/5 multisig, with all 5 addresses being anonymous new addresses. Blast may be able to execute code upgrades and immediately steal funds through multisig. Although many other L2 solutions, including Arbitrum, currently have the same functionality, Blast is not an L2 (currently), but only a smart contract that accepts user funds and invests them in protocols such as Lido.

No testnet, no trading, no bridge, no rollup, and no sending transaction data to Ethereum. If the 3/5 multisig controlling the contract fails to 'do the right thing' in the future, users will be unable to withdraw the money stored in the Blast contract at any time.

Regarding this, the founder of SlowMist, Yu Xian (@evilcos), also pointed out that there is indeed a possibility of Blast running away, but this does not prevent the community from actively participating: "This so-called L2 of Blast is currently a centralized Web2 project's fission gameplay, except for the contracts posted on Ethereum, but it has been endorsed by several well-known institutions. Users still tend to trust projects endorsed by institutions."

He said that, as Jarrod Watts said, Blast's contract is an upgradable contract, controlled by a 3/5 multisig (unknown who the 5 people are) and without a time lock. If the project party wants to run away, either upgrade a malicious logic contract through multisig, or set a malicious mainnetBridge through enableTransition.

The Chen Jian Jason from the Institute of Everything Research (@jason_chen998) holds a similar view, believing that although Blast has various problems, it does not affect user participation. He posted a dynamic on social media, pointing out that Blast may succeed and there may be benefits to be gained, and he himself has also participated, but users need to clearly understand the risks involved.

The Blast platform itself does not create any incremental assets, but rather plays the role of a salesperson helping other banks attract deposits.

Note that Blast is a chain rather than a Defi protocol. If Blast's initial approach to establishing TVL is through deposit interest earning and passive income, it will be challenging to see how much of the seemingly massive TVL can be transformed from dead money to active money and allow money to flow once the mainnet is launched.

According to BlockBeats observation, overall, the community's evaluation of Blast is not good, but this does not seem to prevent most people, even some technical OGs, from secretly participating in the wave caused by Blast. Perhaps this brings out a question to some extent: do technical OGs really look down on those who use Blast as having "zero requirements for security, decentralization, and other aspects"? But do users really have such high demands for technology?

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