Cryptocurrency investors have been quick to remove assets from the Ethereum-based layer 2 blockchain Blast since February 29th. Mainnet launch.
The total value of assets locked (TVL) on the network plunged more than 65% over the past day, falling from a high of $2.27 billion to $745.47 million, according to DefiLama and Flipside data.
Last year, Blast encouraged community members to lock up their Ethereum and stablecoin assets, offering up to 5% annual returns generated from staked ETH and real-world asset protocols.
The attractiveness of high returns and potential airdrops encouraged community members to participate. However, the move drew criticism from cryptocurrency stakeholders, who pointed out that users would not be able to withdraw their assets until the mainnet launches.
The successful mainnet launch resulted in users quickly withdrawing their stagnant assets, leading to a sharp decline in TVL.
Despite these setbacks, Blast continues to operate, boasting a total of over 1 million transactions on its network and seeing the launch of several new decentralized applications.
Phishing site rampage
Meanwhile, malicious actors exploited the Blast mainnet launch to proliferate phishing sites mimicking the Layer2 network’s official platform.
Web 3 security company Scam Sniffer disclosed two cases in which individuals fell victim to these scams and lost digital assets totaling over $5 million.
In some cases, the user suffered A loss of $4.39 million consisting of $ALI and $PUSH tokens occurred after interacting with a fraudulent Permit Batch message from Uniswap Permit2.
other users encountered A similar fate resulted in the loss of $717,817 worth of Aave BTC and Pandora tokens via an airdrop phishing site.
These incidents have prompted Scam Sniffer to issue the following stern warning:
“There are too many phishing sites pretending to be Blast! “It’s time to remind you that clicking on links in Twitter comments is dangerous.”
Blast echoed this sentiment, urging the community to be wary of scammers and rely only on official documentation to access block explorers, RPCs, and other chain-related information.