BLAST, the native token of Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Blast, experienced a 20% surge in value after its launch, while a flood of fake airdrop posts overwhelmed platform X.
During its launch, BLAST was priced at $0.02 per token, resulting in a fully diluted value of $2 billion, as reported by Ambient Finance and trading platform Aevo.
Blur, the creators of the incentivized NFT marketplace, introduced BLAST, which initially had a market cap of $392 million.
According to CoinMarketCap data, the price of BLAST has now increased by just over 20% to $0.024. The cryptocurrency currently has a market capitalization of $408 million and a daily trading volume of $730 million.
The airdrop distributed 17% of BLAST’s total supply, with 7% allocated to users who bridged Ether or USD on Blast (USDB) to the network since late last year.
Another 7% was given to users who contributed to the success of decentralized applications (dApps) on the network, and 3% was reserved for future community airdrops by the Blur Foundation.
Unfortunately, Blast encountered significant challenges from scammers on social media. Many fraudulent posts falsely claimed that the airdrop had begun earlier than expected. These posts, using the same profile picture and display name as Blast’s legitimate X account, directed users to fake websites and boasted about “Gold checkmarks” introduced by Elon Musk, the current owner of the platform.
Some of these suspicious links even managed to infiltrate Blast’s official Discord server before being removed by a community moderator.
According to cybersecurity firm Scam Sniffer, one victim reportedly lost $217,000 worth of cryptocurrency after visiting a phishing site. The user unknowingly signed multiple malicious transactions, highlighting the ongoing difficulties in combating fraudulent activity on the platform.
Despite the successful distribution of the airdrop, it received criticism from market commentators on X, particularly regarding the absence of a staking mechanism for BLAST tokens.
Additionally, some BLAST token holders expressed their intention to sell their airdropped tokens immediately upon the opening of perpetual markets.
Following the zkSync airdrop earlier in the month, Blast’s airdrop is the second Ethereum layer-2 blockchain airdrop in June.
The zkSync token distribution faced heavy criticism from the community, with claims that many users were excluded in favor of Sybil addresses – multiple wallets created by the same user to claim a large number of tokens.