Blast mainnet halts for 1 hour due to Ethereum Dencun upgrade obstacle

Blast, the layer-2 network created by Blur founder Tieshun Roquerre, halted on March 13 after a major Ethereum upgrade shipped. 

L2 protocol Blast stopped block production following the deployment of Dencun, an Ethereum update designed to slash gas fees on layer-2 solutions. The Blast team did not specify the Dencun-related issues; however, on-chain data showed that the Blast mainnet ceased finalizing transactions for nearly an hour.

Core engineering contributors are working on a fix. We’ll share an update and post-mortem once the fix is live. ETA 30-60 minutes.

Blast team on X

Roquerre, commonly known as Pacman, raised over $20 million in a funding round led by Paradigm and Standard Crypto late last year for the project. Blast was initially a multi-sig address where early supporters could deposit Ether (ETH) and accumulate points. Airdrop speculation also incentivized deposits. 

Blast L2 had a $2.3 billion total value locked (TVL) at its peak per DefiLlama but nosedived below $650 million after withdrawals were enabled earlier this month. At press time, its TVL has surged back above $1 billion.

The latest update from the team said operations were returned to normal, and an analysis was underway.

This is a developing story.