Ethereum layer 2 Blast to shut down, users must exit by Oct 26

Blast, once one of Ethereum's largest layer-2 networks, said on Friday it will shut down. Its total value locked has fallen more than 98% from a 2024 peak. The team told users to move their funds to Ethereum's main network by October 26.

The news came in a post on Blast's official X account on October 2, 2026. The network said the cost of running the chain had grown larger than the money it brings in, and that it saw no credible path to making the business work.

Why Blast is closing down

Blast launched in November 2023 and raised $20 million from the crypto investors Paradigm and Standard Crypto before the chain went live. It was built by Tieshun Roquerre, the founder of the NFT marketplace Blur, who goes by Pacman online. The pitch was yield. Money sitting on Ethereum through Blast earned interest on its own, and for a while deposits poured in. The chain rode the 2024 wave of new rollups that paid users to show up.

At its peak in June 2024, Blast held between $2.2 billion and $2.26 billion in deposits, by different trackers' counts. That did not last. By early October 2026, value locked had dropped to about $32 million, according to DefiLlama. The data site L2Beat put total value secured near $36.71 million on October 3, down 62.4% over the prior week.

From more than $2 billion to under $40 million in two years. More than 98% of the money gone.

In its statement, Blast wrote that the ongoing costs of maintaining the chain now exceed the revenue the layer 2 generates, and that it does not see a credible path to making the chain economically sustainable. Roquerre and his team did not say how many users still hold funds on the chain, or how many wallets remain active.

Deposits had chased a token and an automatic yield. Once the BLAST token launched and its price fell, the reason to park money there faded. The money left fast. The token traded near $0.0003 on October 2, worth about 99% less than its June 2024 high, according to figures reported by Unchained. A falling token tends to pull its chain down with it.

What happens to funds on Blast

Users have until October 26 to withdraw through Blast's normal interface. After that date the interface closes, and anyone with assets left will need to interact directly with Blast's bridge contracts on Ethereum to pull their crypto out. That is a more technical route, and Blast said it would publish step-by-step instructions before the cutoff.

There is a catch in the timing. Before the deadline, Blast will unwind its holdings in Lido, the liquid staking protocol, a process the team said would take about a week. While that runs, withdrawals will be paused. The network also said it would cut the standard withdrawal delay to 24 hours once the Lido exit finishes.

Blast urged people to move their assets to Ethereum before the deadline rather than wait. The team has not said what will happen to the BLAST token after the chain stops producing blocks, or who will keep the bridge contracts maintained over the long term. Those gaps matter most to anyone still holding stablecoins or tokens on the network.

What to watch

The case points to a hard truth about layer 2s. Running one means paying to post data and proofs back to Ethereum, and that bill does not shrink just because users leave. When the fees a chain collects fall below those costs, the math stops working. Blast was not alone. Other incentive-driven chains have seen deposits drain once the rewards dried up.

Blast said it would publish withdrawal instructions well before October 26, and the next few weeks will test how cleanly a chain can close. Whether every holder sees the notice in time is another question. Funds left on the chain will not vanish, but reaching them gets harder after the deadline. For now, the simplest path runs through Blast's own interface, and it closes on October 26.