Blast: November’s crypto megahype with a powerful launch scenario

$624m TVL for 7 days. 67,000 users. One of the best launches this year. The entire onboarding experience is a work of art. From a 24-year-old founder in his 4th(!) project. $20 million from Paradigm and others. His previous project, Blur, spectacularly devoured 80% of OpenSea in a year.

Although you might feel a little ashamed now, I know that you still won’t check it, so let me describe how they pulled it off.

Launch day is the most important one in the life of the protocol. On the first day, you release the spring you’ve been pulling for several preparation months. This is how the top crypto projects are launched. Nobody meticulously crawls into the top 100 of the top 1,000. The impulse can be different, depending on your set of conditions: investors, reputation, idea, budget, or marketing quality.

Process:

0. Registration by invite, received from anyone who has already deposited liquidity.

1. Next, the X subscription.

2. Connect to Discord.

3. Connect a wallet. This is where they collect data to link Twitter accounts to wallets, allowing them to obtain accurate data on the audience.

4. The account features high-quality UI/UX. ETH or USDT deposits. The commission on current gas is $15-30.

Now, the art part begins:

5. Liquidity cannot be withdrawn until February 24th. The launch of the protocol is scheduled for this day (there are simply no other dates available). This strategy allows you to remove any level of output and show a sharper increase in the graph.

6. The protocol does not exist yet. There is only a one-sided bridge that has absorbed market liquidity. In general, the liquidity increased to $37 billion in September and $47 billion in November.

7. The idea of the protocol is simple – “the other L2 solutions have no profitability, unlike us. 4-5% in the main asset + our token on top, which we will drop in May.” Income arises as liquidity is immediately sent to Lido and Maker.

8. To earn more from the airdrop, users should complete tasks that pump up the protocol’s economy and increase loyalty. Provide liquidity, invite friends via referral, log into your account periodically, do the spins, get rated, etc.

9. Two-level referral. 16% and 8%. They were the first project with tier-1 investors that did this. In your account, you can get 8 separate referral links. One registration per link. This model is already used by many: it forces the user to be more focused on each link. You can only get new refs if registrations come through the old ones.

10. Target geos: USA, China, Japan, South Korea. The most active markets right now.

Blur gave away $100 million in tokens. Another example of well-developed user mechanics. The average drop size was $400, although some of my degen subscribers got $100k from this drop.

Massive criticism of the project for Ponzi elements forced the main investor, Paradigm, to issue a statement that Blast crossed those very “red lines” and that they do not support such tactics. Objectively, it looks audacious.

But the real flavor is in the protocol design.

This is certainly not a Ponzi, neither legally nor practically. But it also works effectively, triggering a network effect. The thing is that they give out points as rewards for everyone. Thus, there is no key mechanism of the pyramid that depends on the influx of new investments. Blast does not technically have any investments, but they occur in the underlying asset: staking in Lido and profitability from T-bills on MakerDAO (American government bonds). This way, Blast looks like a simple derivative.

Subsequent conversion into a token will take place at an unknown rate and without pre-determined public rules. For now, it’s all just a game.

If you decide to deposit, keep in mind that according to one Twitter survey, more than 64% of users believe that Blast will be hacked before February. Well, these things happen.