The Blast Bull Case
Some immediately cast Blast aside as "yet another L2". This page attempts to explain the Blast bull case in the view of some of Thruster's contributors, partners, and other supporters.
Native Yield
"Capital efficiency" has been a driving narrative for builders and users of DeFi since its inception. This continues today as protocols seek to continue to unlock inefficiencies to increase fee capture and yield.
Innovations have been made like with Aave v3's e-mode or Balancer's metastable pools unlocking additional yield by better utilizing idle capital. The golden goose has always been bridged chain-level capital, though. As of this page's writing, there is in excess of $10 billion worth of canonical Ethereum mainnet assets on Ethereum rollups alone. This doesn't even count ETH, stables, and other reserve assets bridged to other chains.
Blast is attempting to unlock this wealth of capital by building yield directly into the chain by depositing reserve assets (ETH, stables) into yield-bearing strategies on mainnet that pass yield back to rollup users.
To be clear, this strategy carries some risk. But if done correctly and with the proper assumptions and considerations around principal loss risk, this is a massive unlock for L2s. Blast being the first to do it will allow the chain to carry significant advantage.
By building in native yield, Blast gives protocols the ability to leverage tens of millions of dollars worth of native yield (incentives effectively) in unique ways without significantly inflating the BLAST token.
Native yield can be built directly into AMMs, lending markets, and other DeFi products to increase liquidity, user retention, and native value accrual to native protocols which will catalyze further growth.
High Velocity, DeFi-Friendly Capital
By far, one of the strongest things Blast has going for it is the "quality" of the capital on the chain.
Upon quick analysis either on-chain or through the Blast leaderboard, we can see that Blast's top depositor list is chock-full of wallets that
Understand DeFi well and are willing to execute on-chain operations,
Have a wealth of capital on other chains that can be deposited on Blast should the opportunity arise, and
Are high-velocity, risk-seeking pools of capital looking for new opportunities.
While a lot of this capital is farming the airdrop, we have conviction on the Blast team, based on the permanence of Blur's success and the narratives they drove there, to ensure much of this capital remains on the Blast chain and thus the ecosystem underneath it.
We are building Thruster product and strategy around this thesis around Blast's pool of capital, ensuring that Thruster is the home of new token launches an a springboard for fresh DeFi protocols to build on.
Builder Alignment
While some other chains support builders through small gestures like smaller grants (often riddled with bureaucratic processes) and light co-marketing, Blast has telegraphed both publicly and in discussions with builders its intent to strongly support native teams like Thruster.
This will be through a number of mechanisms, but namely through two:
Dev Airdrop: Half of Blast's entire airdrop will be distributed to builders. Even with some conservative estimates about Blast's success, we can expect there still to be tens of millions of dollars given to builders. This would be the biggest grant of incentives to L2 builders since Arbitrum STIP / airdrop, sure to catalyze deep interest by strong builders.
Gas Sharing: Gas spent by Blast contracts will be refunded by the Blast chain, acting as another stream of revenue or a way to reinvest or compensate users.
Smaller shows of support like co-marketing, connectivity with investors and pools of capital will also strongly benefit protocols like Thruster.
Strong Backers
Along with economically supporting builders through the aforementioned levers, Blast has strong soft social alignment with builders via its institutional investors.
Paradigm is well respected as one of the best builder-friendly venture capital firms in the industry, with a suite of open-source infrastructure investments incubated or otherwise strongly supported by the firm. With skin in the game in Blast's success, we can expect the firm to drive some builders toward Blast.
Between Standard Crypto, along with the suite of connected angel investors in the Blast round, we can also expect there to be strong alignment with builders and pools of capital to build on or use Blast.
Why We're Building on Blast
Our conviction on the Blast opportunity begins with the aforementioned reasons. Upon analyzing the wealth of chains launching in the coming year or two, we quickly realized that with native yield, high-velocity capital, and alignment with key builders both economically & socially via Blast's backers, we realized Blast was likely to be a front runner in 2024 and beyond.
We continued to build conviction as we referenced our network, containing a number of Blast backers and large depositors in the bridge.
Along with the catalysts mentioned at the top of this document, we're thankful to be backed and supported by some key leaders in the Blast political and economic stack.
These partners will be key in driving builders, liquidity, and attention to Blast and Thruster more specifically. In a competitive environment, this will be of immense importance.