Blast, the Web3 protocol, has incredibly locked in a total value of $839 million, gaining an impressive 26.5% just over the last week, as shown by DefiLlama’s data. This astounding growth has occurred merely weeks after its contentious launch last month, defying technical issues and rigorous investor scrutiny. The spiralling growth of Blast can be attributed to its unique staking model, devised as a scaling solution for the Ethereum network.
However, the smooth sailing has been punctuated by hurdles and contentious issues. To illustrate, last month, Blast disclosed an instance where a user lost $100,000 after conversion of a deposit to Dai, all thanks to a misconfigured slippage parameter on the user interface. In recompense, Blast yielded $10,000 to the stakeholder.
Consequently, the compensation payout drew from Blast’s weighty capital of $20 million, which it generated from investors, including Paradigm. It’s worth noting that the relationship between Blast and Paradigm is not without hitches. Paradigm’s head of research, Dan Robinson, voiced his disapproval of Blast’s approach of launching a bridge before the protocol’s layer-2 network is live, describing it as a bad precedent.
Prominent among the controversies confronting Blast is the missing withdrawal functionality. Currently, users trustingly stake their deposits on Blast, hoping for a withdrawal feature to be added within the upcoming months.
Notwithstanding the tribulations, Blast has garnered an enviable community of over 75,000 members within a few weeks. In line with their growth strategy, the company is currently looking to hire senior engineers for its forthcoming deployments.