Blast is Shutting Down its Operations

[RazerMouseMobile]

So sad we have another L2 to shutdown. This proves how difficult in sustaining the blockchain in the crypto. We have plenties of dead L2 such as moonbeam, Sophon, loopring and many more. This is also showing us how copy pasta L2 is not even worthy. It has to be an awareness for any new developers not to create another l2.

Running a blockchain is costly when they can't generate sustainable revenue from there.

Beside that we also have so many zombie L1 still exist till now, but i'm sure these zombie L1 will have same fate like L2. We finally come to the era where the only blockchain with real economic activity will survive, and revenue matter a lot.
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You've said it already. Many L1's and L2's out there will have the same fate as what happened with Blast because at one point, they will realize that it isn't worth it anymore to run a chain when you aren't generating enough profits to sustain it.

Nothing to be sad of if you will ask me because it's destined to happen. There are lots of L2 projects out there that we don't need that many. Ethereum has been on the top, and there has been many L2 projects that are created on it. Do we need more of it? I mean what are the difference between the old L2 and the new ones? None IMO that's why investors will just prefer to do it on the older ones.

Well, I guess we can also add the fact that we being in a bear market is a factor to why Blast and many others will shut down in the future. In this industry, those who survives, thrives, and those who will not will have the same fate as Blast.

[asriloni]

So sad we have another L2 to shutdown. This proves how difficult in sustaining the blockchain in the crypto. We have plenties of dead L2 such as moonbeam, Sophon, loopring and many more. This is also showing us how copy pasta L2 is not even worthy. It has to be an awareness for any new developers not to create another l2.

Running a blockchain is costly when they can't generate sustainable revenue from there.

Beside that we also have so many zombie L1 still exist till now, but i'm sure these zombie L1 will have same fate like L2. We finally come to the era where the only blockchain with real economic activity will survive, and revenue matter a lot.
---

You've said it already. Many L1's and L2's out there will have the same fate as what happened with Blast because at one point, they will realize that it isn't worth it anymore to run a chain when you aren't generating enough profits to sustain it.

Nothing to be sad of if you will ask me because it's destined to happen. There are lots of L2 projects out there that we don't need that many. Ethereum has been on the top, and there has been many L2 projects that are created on it. Do we need more of it? I mean what are the difference between the old L2 and the new ones? None IMO that's why investors will just prefer to do it on the older ones.

Well, I guess we can also add the fact that we being in a bear market is a factor to why Blast and many others will shut down in the future. In this industry, those who survives, thrives, and those who will not will have the same fate as Blast.

We need L2 as an alternative option, but one or two are enough, no way we need tens of it because most of it is gonna be useless. We don't even need L2 if Vitalik is scalling up his ethereum.

Beside that bearish trend is also matter, but the thing that matter a lot is incentive. Those L2 were crowded when they gave incentive to the users but after they stop it. All of their users gone, then back to the blockchain that gives them confidence to use.

Let's see how many l2s remaining next years. I guess we will have only a few f them still exist.

[Abiky]

So sad we have another L2 to shutdown. This proves how difficult in sustaining the blockchain in the crypto. We have plenties of dead L2 such as moonbeam, Sophon, loopring and many more. This is also showing us how copy pasta L2 is not even worthy. It has to be an awareness for any new developers not to create another l2.

Running a blockchain is costly when they can't generate sustainable revenue from there.

Beside that we also have so many zombie L1 still exist till now, but i'm sure these zombie L1 will have same fate like L2. We finally come to the era where the only blockchain with real economic activity will survive, and revenue matter a lot.

At this pace, I think exchange-based L2 networks will be the only ones left in ETH. By this, I mean an L2 network such as Base or Robinhood Chain. The rest will simply fade away into oblivion, as they fail to bring revenue from transaction fees (as a result of low adoption). The main culprit is ETH's base layer (or L1 network) experiencing a reduction in gas fees. If on-chain gas fees are already low, why bother switching to an L2?

Still, it's possible to get cheaper fees on L2 networks. People just don't want the hassle of moving away from the main Ethereum blockchain to another chain. It's all a matter of convenience. I wonder if Arbitrum and Optimism are next? Scroll, too? Only time will tell...

[wapwapwendy]

I'm sharing this just in case some people here aren't aware of the latest news from the Blast L2 chain.

After around 3 years in the crypto industry, the Blast team has decided to shut down operations on the Blast chain.

Blast will be shutting down.

We launched Blast with the goal of building a self-sustaining chain for users and developers. Unfortunately, the economics of operating the chain no longer make sense: the ongoing costs of maintaining Blast exceed the revenue generated by the L2, and we do not see a credible path to making the chain economically sustainable.

As a result, we've made the difficult decision to wind Blast down.

We're sorry to the users and developers who believed in Blast, built on it, and supported the ecosystem. Our priority now is making the shutdown as smooth and safe as possible.

We're asking all users to withdraw their assets from Blast to Ethereum mainnet, including any balances held in the Blast PWA.

To make this easier, we will be reducing the withdrawal delay to 24 hours.

As part of the shutdown process, we'll first begin withdrawing Blast's Lido assets. This process is expected to take approximately one week. During this period, withdrawals will temporarily be unavailable, even after the withdrawal delay is reduced to 24 hours.

Once that process is complete, withdrawals will resume with the new 24-hour delay.

Users will have until October 26, 2026 to withdraw through the normal Blast interface.

After October 26, assets will remain withdrawable, but users will need to interact directly with the Blast bridge contracts on Ethereum L1. We'll publish detailed instructions before then.

We strongly encourage everyone to withdraw their assets to Ethereum mainnet before October 26.

Based on their X post, they are struggling with the ongoing costs of Blast maintenance that exceed its revenue.

Blast team is also asking all users to move their assets to ethereum mainnet before October 26, 2026.

If you have assets on Blast, it's recommended to move/bridge it asap before too late.

This is a good reminder that even a popular project can struggle if the revenue can't cover the operating costs. Users should take the withdrawal deadline seriously and move their assets while the normal interface is still available. It also shows why it's risky to leave funds on a chain just because the project seems successful today.

[Conqueror777]

I have seen this chain for a while now and it does show that there are just some unlucky and miscalculated turn of events.

I'm curious to what would happen to the dApps built on Blast? I'm thinking that they would probably go and go to turn their attention in other L2s. There would probably some that could interrupt services in Blast.

What L2 network would have this outcome as well? I think it's not just about the incentives but checking the infrastructure, sequencers, security, etc. to be sustainable. I do hope that other L2s would be learning form this.
^{P.S. Additional request to change the thread title.} 

dapps built on blast will probably shut down as well.

[asriloni]

So sad we have another L2 to shutdown. This proves how difficult in sustaining the blockchain in the crypto. We have plenties of dead L2 such as moonbeam, Sophon, loopring and many more. This is also showing us how copy pasta L2 is not even worthy. It has to be an awareness for any new developers not to create another l2.

Running a blockchain is costly when they can't generate sustainable revenue from there.

Beside that we also have so many zombie L1 still exist till now, but i'm sure these zombie L1 will have same fate like L2. We finally come to the era where the only blockchain with real economic activity will survive, and revenue matter a lot.

At this pace, I think exchange-based L2 networks will be the only ones left in ETH. By this, I mean an L2 network such as Base or Robinhood Chain. The rest will simply fade away into oblivion, as they fail to bring revenue from transaction fees (as a result of low adoption). The main culprit is ETH's base layer (or L1 network) experiencing a reduction in gas fees. If on-chain gas fees are already low, why bother switching to an L2?

Still, it's possible to get cheaper fees on L2 networks. People just don't want the hassle of moving away from the main Ethereum blockchain to another chain. It's all a matter of convenience. I wonder if Arbitrum and Optimism are next? Scroll, too? Only time will tell...

It may be true. Base and Robinhood have the big companies behind them. So they won't be having trouble when it comes to the funding to keep running their blockchain. Meanwhile, the rest of L2s in the market has no company backed them, that's why their revenue matter a lot. Once they won't able to cover the operational cost. They have no reason other then to shutdown their L2s.

It's only matter of times until so many L2s come to the hell. Beside that OP and Arbitrum still have pretty good TVL, and their onchain transaction fees can still cover their chain revenue. Meanwhile, i'm not sure about scroll with only 9m TVL, they can only generate even lesst han $100 bucks a day. So Scroll is among the L2s that will be shutdown soon.

dapps built on blast will probably shut down as well.

No, some of them are supporting multiple blockchains. So they just only need to cease their operation in blast blockchain, then focus on other blockchain.

[bangjoe]

In fact, many networks are already inactive and have minimal revenue, some of which have not publicly announced that they are closing, but relatively let it go, not only L2 Ethereum.
A network or protocol will not last long without having users, because they live from the transaction fees of each user, one other example is Manta and yes look at the network how much they earn, and that should be a concern if you want to invest in project coins, including on other chains such as L1.

Like a business, they will not survive if there is no income, while maintenance and development needs to be done and it costs money, so be careful on altcoins and check back every project invested.

[Balmain]

I am not surprised that projects like this are shutting down operations. There was a huge amount of hype at one point; people earned airdrops, and many remained very optimistic about Layer 2 solutions. If you earn tokens from an unproven project like this, you should definitely sell them otherwise, their value could drop to zero. We might see even more Layer 2 projects cease operations, as many of them aren't actually doing anything.

[TastyChillySauce00]

I wonder if Arbitrum and Optimism are next? Scroll, too? Only time will tell...

Arbitrum still going strong, Optimism is going to be among the last L2 shutting down because their OP stack and Superchain initiation, basically there are many L2 blockchains that used OP stack to build their own such as Ink, Unichain, and even Base. Unfortunately in October, Base moved to its own stack.

Scroll is the most obvious one, only matter of time until shutting down, it was able to sustain for quite a while because ether.fi using it for settlement layer, not anymore.

[Abiky]

It may be true. Base and Robinhood have the big companies behind them. So they won't be having trouble when it comes to the funding to keep running their blockchain. Meanwhile, the rest of L2s in the market has no company backed them, that's why their revenue matter a lot. Once they won't able to cover the operational cost. They have no reason other then to shutdown their L2s.

It's only matter of times until so many L2s come to the hell. Beside that OP and Arbitrum still have pretty good TVL, and their onchain transaction fees can still cover their chain revenue. Meanwhile, i'm not sure about scroll with only 9m TVL, they can only generate even lesst han $100 bucks a day. So Scroll is among the L2s that will be shutdown soon.

The problem with most L2s is that they have their own native token. Why not stick to plain-old ETH? Just what Coinbase's Base L2 network is doing. That way, the revenue problem would be solved. I mean, ETH flows heavily on L1. Bringing it to L2 would help increase adoption. This is more convenient, as users won't need to manage a separate token for the L2 network. Developers of L2 projects should create some sort of self-sustaining fund, to help keep revenue flowing for long. Maybe add some sort of "founder's tax" like Zcash did? Only that instead of "taxing" the miners, these networks would be "taxing" the validators (taking up a portion of rewards for the project's R&D). The possibilities are endless.

In the end, we'll be left with exchange-based L2 networks. Like I've said before, only Base and Robinhood Chain will survive. Even Binance Chain will be around with us (although it's not an ETH L2 network). Unfortunately, this means centralization dominating the L2 space. Truly-decentralized alternatives are getting scarcer by the day. Better "stick" with the main chain whenever possible to enjoy true decentralization and censorship-resistance. Just my two sats.

[jossiel]

I guess that all of those airdrop farmers have enjoyed the free money from their ecosystem. But later they have realized that it's not a sustainable economy model.

For projects to have this kind of earning opportunity, they really need to put up an equal and balance earning and profiting share for their users and for the ecosystem as well but maybe that's the sad part there.

Not sustainable economy model is true, but airdrop farmers aren't really enjoying free money, the distribution of airdrop was a disaster, several platform which was told to distribute gems and points are keeping it for themselves and honestly this is the reason why the blockchain flopped so hard, they failed in the execution beside the decentralized casino nonsense. It was massively hyped because the founder was the person behind major NFT marketplace Blur.

I've checked the blur and it's still operational, is it that the founder is going to focus more with that market place?

The volume isn't that much anymore for the most of the collections that are up for sales there.

That bad distribution for the airdrop probably one of the reasons that have caused it as well because wherever it is, users are there and if they've seen that it's a disaster all will leave.

[shinratensei_]

I've checked the blur and it's still operational, is it that the founder is going to focus more with that market place?

The volume isn't that much anymore for the most of the collections that are up for sales there.

That bad distribution for the airdrop probably one of the reasons that have caused it as well because wherever it is, users are there and if they've seen that it's a disaster all will leave.

Nah, Blur is shutting down too and they recently announced it here Once-largest Ethereum NFT marketplace Blur is shutting down after volumes collapse 99%, at this point I think they simply give up trying because even NFT is dying nowadays, Blur airdrop was great so it shouldn't be the reason. The end of an era I guess. As the market develop, old narrative faded into irrelevancy. The market again proves that a slow adapting platform will fade into oblivion. Opensea knew NFT is a dying narrative and do a 360 to become super platform that have swap, perp dex, and NFT all in one dashboard.