According to Blockworks, Blast launched its optimistic rollup late Thursday, enabling users to withdraw funds that had been locked in a team multisig for over three months. By launch time, the value of user deposits had reached nearly $2.3 billion. Users now have the option to withdraw or utilize the funds on the newly launched layer-2. Data from DefiLlama early Friday indicated that the balance of the Blast bridge contract had dropped by about 70%, which was reported as '$1.6 billion outflows' by CoinDesk. However, the actual amount of withdrawals is not that straightforward. Funds are being withdrawn from the deposit contract at a healthy rate, but the capital, primarily Lido staked ether (stETH), is moving into Blast's ETH Yield Manager Proxy rather than leaving the network due to user withdrawals.
Some withdrawals are expected, as ether (ETH) has increased by about 70% since Blast invited users to lock up their capital for over three months in exchange for a points IOU. Many depositors seem to be eager to reclaim their funds, based on numerous discussions in the Blast Discord channel. However, some users claim they were unaware of the delay period required to use Blast's bridge back to Ethereum. Due to the specifics of Blast's optimistic rollups design, depositors must wait 14 days and pay Ethereum gas fees to transfer their deposits back to the mainnet. Optimistic rollups, like OP Mainnet, usually have a seven-day withdrawal delay.
The challenge period, which allows for the submission of fraud proofs to ensure transaction integrity before finalization, is known as the withdrawal delay. The Blast developer documentation states that the extended period is a 'security feature designed to help secure Blast.' Blockworks has contacted Blast representatives for clarification. Dedicated third-party bridge dapps may provide faster transfers, but at a cost. For example, Orbiter charges a 1.5% fee for the service.
Blast has been a marketing phenomenon up to this point. Launched with great fanfare last November, it was led by NFT dapp Blur founder Tieshun Roquerre, known online as 'Pacman.' Since then, it has hired developers, forked the OP stack, and continued to attract users enticed by the promise of Blast points in addition to ETH staking yield. 85,000 accounts have access to the Blast Discord, and the team has incentivized numerous independent developers to build on the platform through its Big Bang campaign. 57,000 wallets have interacted with the chain since the layer-2 went live, according to data. DefiLlama now tracks about $40 million in DeFi dapps, primarily in the borrowing and lending market ZeroLend, an Aave v3 fork. However, it has also experienced rug-pulls. At least six of the many meme coins launched so far have been scams that became worthless, according to Dexscreener. Assuming Blast retains at least $1.88 billion of the deposits received, it will be the third-largest layer-2 network on Ethereum, an impressive achievement.