Crypto
Another One Bites The Dust: Blast Shuts Down, Price Crashes 30%
Blast will shut down its L2 after costs surpassed revenue, while BLAST crashes 30% and another wave of crypto project closures grows.
BLOCKINSIDERLoadingBlast will shut down its L2 after costs surpassed revenue, while BLAST crashes 30% and another wave of crypto project closures grows.
Blast, the Ethereum layer-2 known for native yield, announced its shutdown on October 2. The team blamed operating costs that now exceed the revenue the network generates.
The BLAST token plunged roughly 30% within an hour of the news. Another shutdown now joins a growing list of casualties in this prolonged bear market.
Blast stood out as the only chain with native yield, paying 3.4% on ETH and 8% on stablecoins. Its team has decided to wind the network down, as per its announcement on X.
The team cited rising operating costs as the reason. Maintenance expenses now exceed the revenue the chain generates, leaving no credible path to sustainability. This indirectly points to the pressure of a prolonged bear market.
Blast will first exit its Lido assets, a process expected to take about a week. Withdrawals will be temporarily unavailable during that period. Afterward, the withdrawal delay drops to 24 hours.
October 26 is the final date to withdraw through the standard interface. After that, users must interact directly with the Blast bridge contract on Ethereum. About $63.5 million still sat in the canonical bridge at the time of the announcement.
BLAST fell about 30% in the hour after the announcement. It touched $0.00028 at the lows, according to the 12-hour chart. At the latest reading, it traded near $0.000294, down 27.73% on the 12-hour candle.
A single large red candle drove the drop. It sliced through both the 0.000356 and 0.000345 EMAs without pause. Those averages had acted as support during the September climb. Both EMAs had been rising steadily since early September, showing how strong the earlier trend was.
The crash erased the entire September rally. BLAST had climbed from near $0.00029 at the start of the month to above $0.00050. Its decline began a week before the news, as sellers took control.
With the chain closing, token demand has little fundamental support. Traders may now watch whether $0.00028 holds as the next floor. Reclaiming the EMAs would require a sharp reversal in sentiment, which appears unlikely.
Blast is far from alone. RootData counts more than 100 crypto projects that have closed, filed for bankruptcy, or gone dark in 2026. The list includes BitMEX, BitMart, AscendEX, and Moonbeam. Layer-2 networks such as Loopring have not been spared either.
DeFi protocols make up more than half of those closures. Ark Invest's Lorenzo Valente called this the biggest consolidation phase in crypto's history.
That tally has already exceeded the volume of closures seen during the 2022 bear market. However, 2022 brought systemic shocks, as fraud and leverage toppled Terra, Celsius, and FTX in succession. This year has no single point of contagion. Earlier bankruptcy waves hit in 2018 and 2022, but this one differs structurally.
Instead, token-funded treasuries ran dry after most altcoins lost 70% to 90% of their value. Venture capital is also writing fewer rescue checks, leaving weaker projects without a lifeline. Hacks added pressure, with a record $1.1 billion lost in the first half of the year. Some analysts read the surge in failures as a sign that the market is nearing its cycle low.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, trades near $84,810, up 0.70% on the daily chart. It remains capped below the $86,663 resistance after touching $87,256 intraday. Support rests at $81,209, followed by $75,491. BTC holding above $81,209 keeps the uptrend structure intact.
The chart maps three consolidation bases and a rounded, parabolic structure. A clean break above $86,663 could open the path toward $100,000. Until then, BTC's resilience contrasts sharply with the weakness across altcoins.
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