According to a July 16 X post from the network’s development team, the Ethereum Layer-2 Blast network has cut its withdrawal time in half, from 14 days to 7 days. The network previously required longer withdrawal times “to provide a buffer for Lido withdrawals.” The team claims that this longer wait time is no longer necessary.
The team posted a message from the new X account @blast, replacing the previously used account @blast_l2. The old account announced the existence of the new account on its profile.
In a related thread, the team stated that Blast core contributors have been monitoring withdrawals for the past four months and have now concluded that “the smaller buffer should be sufficient to handle almost all withdrawal activity.” They warned that some withdrawals may still take longer than seven days, but that this will only happen “in rare circumstances.” Meanwhile, deposits from Ethereum to Blast will still take “minutes” to process, the post states.
The change of protocol handle on X was noticed by some critics of Blast. Jim, a former Aave contributor and X user, speculated that Blast will not remain a Layer 2 for Ethereum. “Blast changed their handle from @Blast_L2 to @blast and now calls themselves a ‘full-stack chain’,” he said. “(F)irst rollup that we are looking to leave Ethereum to be a standalone chain (…) it seems like the meme ether alignment has been going on since day one.”
The Ethereum Layer 2 network inherits security from Ethereum rather than its own nodes.
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Both Blast X accounts now provide links to a June 26 “vision” statement in which they claim Blast will be a “full-stack chain” in the future.
In the accompanying video, founder Tiensun Loker (aka “Pacman”) says that Ethereum Layer-2 is an “implementation detail” and that it “doesn’t matter” whether the network is considered “L2.” However, he also claims that Blast’s “current implementation detail is L2,” but that the implementation could change “if it actually benefits users and it’s worth it to do so.”
On June 26, the Blast network launched the first phase of the airdrop for BLAST tokens. The next day, the token value increased by 40%. It then dropped to $0.017, slightly below the launch price of $0.02.
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