The Blast ecosystem is developing rapidly, and security risks cannot be ignored.

Recently, Blast has become a market hotspot, with its "Big Bang" developer competition ending and the total locked value (TVL) skyrocketing to over $2 billion, occupying an important position in the Layer 2 field. Blast plans to launch its mainnet on February 29, attracting a lot of attention, especially the anticipation for potential airdrops. However, with the rapid development of the ecosystem, various projects are emerging, which also brings potential security risks.

Blast Development History

Blast was launched by Pacman on November 21, 2023, quickly drawing widespread attention from the crypto community. Within 48 hours of its launch, the network's TVL reached $570 million, attracting over 50,000 users. Last year, Blast secured $20 million in funding from investors including Paradigm and Standard Crypto, followed by an additional $5 million investment from Japanese crypto investment firm CGV.

As of February 25, data shows that the Blast contract address holds assets worth over $2 billion, including approximately $1.8 billion in ETH deposited in the Lido protocol and over $160 million in DAI deposited in the MakerDAO protocol, highlighting its market popularity.

Unique Advantages of Blast

The main feature of Blast is to provide native yield for ETH and stablecoins, which is not available in other Layer 2 solutions. After users transfer ETH into Blast, the funds will be deposited into Lido for yield generation, while introducing a new interest-bearing stablecoin USDB (which generates yields by purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds through MakerDAO).

As a Layer 2 project launched by the Blur team, Blast comes with a strong traffic foundation. Blur had previously distributed over $200 million in airdrops to users, accumulating a large community. Blast has successfully attracted a large number of users to participate in staking through airdrop incentives and traffic fission marketing strategies.

Security Risks of Blast

Despite its rapid development, Blast has been controversial since its launch. Some developers question its high level of centralization, which may jeopardize user fund security, while also pointing out that Blast does not meet L2 standards and lacks essential transaction, bridging, and Rollup functionalities.

Through the technical analysis of the Blast Deposit contract, the following main risk points have been identified:

1. Centralization risk: Key functions such as enableTransition can only be called by the administrator, and the contract can be upgraded at any time, posing potential risks.

2. Multi-signature Dispute: The contract permissions are controlled by a 3/5 multi-signature wallet, but the identity of the signing addresses is unclear, raising doubts in the community.

The Blast team acknowledged these risks and stated that they would adopt various hardware wallets for management to reduce centralization risks. However, the specific wallet management processes and preventive measures have not yet been disclosed.

Blast Ecosystem Security Incident

On February 25th, the GambleFi project Risk within the Blast ecosystem allegedly experienced a Rug Pull incident, resulting in a loss of approximately 500 ETH. The project's official social media account has been deleted.

Some investors shared their loss experiences, pointing out that the project seemed credible at first, but the subsequent unlimited financing raised suspicions.

Monitoring shows that most of the stolen funds have been transferred to different exchanges, with a small amount of funds crossing chains to the Arbitrum and Cosmos networks.

With the rapid development of the Blast ecosystem, users need to remain vigilant and carefully assess potential risks when participating in related projects.