Blast is an Ethereum layer 2 launched in February 2024 by the team behind Blur, the NFT marketplace. Its defining feature is native yield: ETH and stablecoin balances on Blast accrue interest by default, with the protocol routing bridged ETH into Lido staking and bridged stablecoins into the MakerDAO DAI Savings Rate. Holders see the yield as an auto-rebasing balance, not as a separate claim.
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That mechanic, plus a famously aggressive go-to-market, made Blast one of the most-discussed L2 launches of the 2024 cycle. It also drew sharp criticism for taking deposits months before any code was live, and for an airdrop in June 2024 that disappointed a chunk of its early farmers. This guide covers what Blast actually is, how the yield is sourced, where it sits versus Arbitrum and Mantle, and which risks are still open.
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Blast is an optimistic rollup on Ethereum that forwards bridged ETH into L1 staking, initially Lido, and routes bridged stablecoins into MakerDAO's onchain T-Bill protocol, then rebases the resulting yield back to wallets and smart contracts on the L2, per Blast's own documentation. It was built by the pseudonymous developer known as Pacman, who is behind the Blur NFT marketplace, as The Defiant described at the time.
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When a user bridges ETH from Ethereum mainnet to Blast, the canonical bridge contract stakes that ETH via Lido and holds the resulting stETH. Bridged stablecoins (initially DAI, with USDB as the wrapped representation on Blast) are deposited into the MakerDAO DAI Savings Rate. The yield flows back into the L2 state through a rebasing token model, so balances grow over time without any user action.
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Two things to flag clearly. First, the yield is not generated by Blast itself. It is sourced from Lido and Maker, which are external Ethereum protocols. Blast is a yield router, not a yield producer. Second, the rebasing defaults differ by asset: docs.blast.io states that ETH rebasing is automatic for externally owned accounts and opt-in for smart contracts, while USDB rebases automatically for both and smart contracts must opt out. That distinction matters for DeFi protocols that need fixed balances for accounting.
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Blast was incubated by Pacman and the Blur team, with funding from Paradigm and Standard Crypto. The pitch, set out on docs.blast.io, is that the default interest rate on other L2s is 0% while Blast targets 4% on ETH and 5% on stablecoins. Blast closes that gap at the chain level rather than asking users to opt into yield apps.
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The team had credibility from Blur, which had taken meaningful NFT market share from OpenSea in 2023 using an aggressive points and airdrop playbook. Blast reused that playbook.
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Blast opened deposits on November 20, 2023, roughly three months before the L2 itself went live. Users could send ETH and stablecoins into a deposit contract that earned points, but withdrawals were locked until February 29, 2024, when mainnet launched.
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Jarrod Watts of Polygon argued that Blast at that point was nothing more than a contract accepting funds and forwarding them to Lido and MakerDAO, saying there was no testnet, no transactions, no bridge, no rollup, and no transaction data going to Ethereum, according to The Defiant's November 25, 2023 report. The same report notes that changes to Blast's contracts sat behind a three-of-five multisig whose signers were unknown entities using relatively new wallets, and that the contract had taken in roughly $488 million in its first five days. Blast responded that upgradeable contracts let developers respond to bugs quickly, and that its signers used separate hardware wallets, cold storage, and geographic separation.
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The BLAST token launched on June 26, 2024. Half of the initial airdrop allocation went to early depositors and the other half to developers and users of Blast-native apps. The unlock schedule was staggered, with a portion claimable at launch and the remainder vesting.
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Reception was mixed. Wallets that had farmed points heavily complained that allocations skewed smaller than expected against the deposits they had locked up since November 2023, which The Defiant reported at nearly $488 million within the first five days alone. Onchain activity and TVL both dropped in the weeks following the claim window, a pattern common across airdrop-driven L2s but particularly visible on Blast given how concentrated the farming was.
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The ecosystem at launch was anchored by apps the Blur team either built or backed directly:

Blast also ran the Big Bang competition in late 2023, distributing points to teams building net-new dapps. That program seeded much of the long-tail ecosystem.
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Blast is a small chain today. DeFiLlama's chains page put Blast total value locked at about $31 million when this article was last checked on September 15, 2026, far below the level the chain carried through the 2024 points-and-airdrop period. Daily active addresses and transaction counts followed a similar curve.
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For current numbers, pull live data from DeFiLlama's chains page rather than quoting stale figures. Blast publishes developer docs at docs.blast.io.
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The native yield framing puts Blast in a small group of L2s that route capital into external yield by default. Two useful comparisons:

For a user choosing between them, the question is whether you want yield baked into the chain (Blast, Mantle) or yield as an app-layer decision (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base).
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Not fully. Blast's transaction-finality docs describe a single Sequencer that orders transactions before publishing them to Ethereum, and the bridge FAQ puts a withdrawal back to Ethereum at roughly seven days. At the 2023 deposit stage, contract upgrades sat behind a three-of-five multisig of unknown signers, per The Defiant's November 25, 2023 report. Governance since moved to the Blast Foundation bylaws, under which tokenholders vote on BLIPs covering parameters such as the ETH liquid staking providers, the composition backing USDB, and the fees taken on ETH and USDB yield. That is more accountability than a bare multisig, and still a long way from a decentralized sequencer set.
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Three risk buckets stand out:

Blast makes the most sense for users who want passive yield on idle ETH or stablecoin balances without manually depositing into Lido or Maker, and who are comfortable with the centralization and external-yield risks above. NFT traders coming from Blur get a familiar UX and access to NFT-native lending on the same chain. DeFi power users running active strategies may find the rebasing model adds accounting friction versus a fixed-balance L2.
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Eco focuses on stablecoin movement across chains rather than yield routing on a single chain. If your goal is moving USDC or USDT between L2s with minimal friction, the relevant tools are intent-based routing systems like Eco Routes, plus CCTP for Circle-native USDC transfers. If your goal is parking idle capital on one L2 and earning the underlying yield automatically, Blast and Mantle are the closer fits.
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Yield mechanics, default rates, and rebasing behavior come from docs.blast.io; sequencer and finality behavior from Blast's transaction-finality docs; governance scope from the Blast Foundation bylaws. All three were read on September 16, 2026. The November 2023 deposit controversy, the three-of-five multisig, the $488 million first-week figure, and Blast's response are from The Defiant's November 25, 2023 report. Chain TVL is from DeFiLlama's chains page as of September 15, 2026. Claims that could not be sourced to one of these pages have been removed rather than softened.
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