Blast Ecosystem Surges on Novel “Jackpot” Incentive Structure

Tokens in the Blast ecosystem are surging after the Ethereum Layer 2 announced its newest feature: Jackpot.

Following the announcement Blast tokens immediately ran with PacMoon

increasing by over 30%, Juice Finance by roughly 40%, and notable NFTs such as Blastopians increased by nearly 50%. Ether and Bitcoin have remained mostly flat in that time.

Despite the increase in prices across the ecosystem, Blast’s total TVL has only risen by 1.7% over the last 7 days, according to DeFiLlama.

Blast Gold

Users can now submit their Blast tokens and NFTs into a jackpot for the chance to win a prize pool of Blast Gold, which is akin to points. Gold is one of two methods to farm the Blast airdrop, with 50% of the airdrop to be awarded to Blast points, and 50% to Blast Gold.

Blast points can only be earned by holding ETH or USDB, and prior to the addition of the jackpot, Blast Gold could only be earned via ecosystem dApps. With the jackpot system, it can now be farmed by holding other assets in the ecosystem such as NFTs and memecoins. The additional incentives to hold these tokens has likely led to the price surge.

New Experiment

The move is yet another experiment in the airdrops and points space, at a time when the dynamic has come under fire. Token distribution events by major projects including EigenLayer, Kamino Finance and Friend.Tech have spurred community backlash. Web3 projects are still trying to figure out how to balance incentives in a way that they can promote activity, while attracting long-term users, and in some cases, also complying with uncertain regulations.

Blast’s mainnet went live in February this year. The Paradigm-backed L2 has proven to be controversial since it launched with a one-way deposit contract in November 2023. However, its total TVL has consistently increased since its launch to its current $1.5 billion, the fourth largest Layer 2, according to L2Beat.

In Blast’s new jackpot design, users are required to submit their assets into a non-custodial deck that can hold up to eight different tokens or NFTs. At the conclusion of every block there is a small chance to hit the jackpot, and a random Blast asset will be selected as the winner. The “gold” will then be distributed to the deck of the asset owner and distributed on a percentage basis.

Users have hit the jackpot twice since it began on Friday, with awards distributed to the PacMoon and Fantasy.Top communities. The value of Blast Gold is speculative, but is currently equal to roughly 37,000 Blast points, which is subject to change based on the supply of points and “gold.”