Blast sees $1.6 billion in asset withdrawals in first 24 hours after mainnet launch

Within the first 24 hours of opening withdrawals on Friday, investors withdrew $1.6 billion of assets from newly-launched layer-2 network Blast, causing the total value locked (TVL) to drop from $2.3 billion to $650 million. Blast is offering airdrops to depositors and developers, with 50% of the allocation going to each group. Despite initial skepticism, Blast attracted $2.3 billion in deposits from 181,000 users and became one of the most active layer-2 networks before the mainnet launch. Several protocols, including Zora and Pyth, have announced Blast integrations, but the ecosystem experienced its first exit scam earlier this week.