One individual, one strategy, two exits.
On October 2, Blast, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, issued a brief announcement stating that operational costs exceeded revenue, leading to the decision to shut down. Ten days later, the NFT trading platform Blur announced it would cease operations on November 12.
Both projects were created by the same individual—Pacman, whose real name is Tieshun Roquerre.
Blur’s monthly trading volume peaked at $1.43 billion. According to DefiLlama, the protocol’s cumulative revenue was $2.26.
Not $22,600, but $2.26. All trading fees were distributed to sellers and creators, with the protocol retaining just $2.26.
This is the story of an individual who took the "points plus airdrop" strategy to its extreme, serving as a case study of this approach reaching its limit.
01 The Person Who Defeated OpenSea with Points
In February 2023, Pacman publicly revealed his identity on X. He introduced himself in a single sentence: "Dropped out of high school to go through Y Combinator at 17."
After dropping out of high school, he enrolled at MIT but later withdrew. He received a $100,000 startup grant from Peter Thiel and founded Namebase, a decentralized domain trading platform, which raised $5 million in a round led by Paradigm and was fully acquired by Namecheap in late 2021. After selling Namebase, he shifted his focus to the NFT market. Identifying OpenSea’s weaknesses in matching speed and listing tools, he began assembling a team to build Blur in early 2022.
Blur’s strategy was straightforward: zero trading fees, with points serving as the real incentive. Users earned more points by placing bids closer to the floor price and keeping them active for longer periods, which could eventually be redeemed for BLUR token airdrops.
On February 14, 2023, BLUR launched its token, airdropping 360 million tokens in the first season, valued at approximately $270 million based on the post-launch price of around $0.76. The following day, Nansen data showed that Blur’s daily trading volume surpassed OpenSea’s for the first time. According to Galaxy Research, Blur’s market share peaked at 80%, leaving OpenSea with only 15.5%.
In March, Blur’s monthly trading volume surged to approximately $1.43 billion. Estimates of wash trading vary significantly across different algorithms: Dune analyst hildobby calculated it at around 14%, while CryptoSlam estimated that over 80% of the volume in the two weeks following the airdrop was artificial.
To attract sellers, Blur also reduced creator royalties to a minimum of 0.5%. Brad Kay, an analyst at The Block, pointed out that Yuga Labs’ quarterly royalty revenue fell from $8.7 million to $2.5 million, primarily due to Blur’s low royalties and mining incentives. Three years later, when Blur announced its shutdown, collector Cryptobscure replied on X: “Good riddance. You ruined NFTs.”
Zero fees bought trading volume, and points bought liquidity, but the protocol itself never intended to generate revenue from transactions. This foreshadowed its first exit.
Before Layer 2 even launched, it raised $500 million.
On November 20, 2023, Pacman launched Blast. Its value proposition was straightforward: deposited funds automatically earn yield. ETH staked via Lido yields approximately 4% annually, while stablecoins converted to USDB are backed by U.S. Treasury yields from MakerDAO, offering around 5%.
The points system was replicated, with the addition of invite codes. New users required an invite code to deposit funds. According to official documentation, inviters received an additional 16% of the invitee’s points, and second-tier inviters received 8%.
At that time, the Layer 2 network had not yet gone live, and deposited funds were locked for approximately three months. Even so, DefiLlama data showed that deposits exceeded $510 million by November 26.
Lead investor Paradigm quickly expressed dissent. Dan Robinson, Head of Research, posted on X that day, stating disagreement with launching the deposit bridge before Layer 2 was ready and with restricting user withdrawals for months, noting that many marketing tactics “cheapened the work of this serious team.”
Pacman responded with several posts on X: Blast’s yields come from Lido staking and MakerDAO U.S. Treasuries, providing a real economic basis; Paradigm did not participate in Blast’s distribution design, and the locking and invite code mechanisms were decided independently by the team.
In other words: the capital is real, the strategy is mine, and it is none of your business.
Controversy did not deter deposits. The mainnet launched on February 29, 2024, and BLAST tokens were issued on June 26, with 17 billion tokens distributed in the first-season airdrop. Based on an initial listing price of approximately $0.025, Decrypt estimated the total value at around $430 million, of which 14 billion tokens were allocated to users.
The total value locked (TVL) began to decline before the token launch. According to DefiLlama data, TVL peaked at $2.26 billion on June 6 and had dropped to $1.63 billion by the day of the token issuance. Users claimed their airdrops and then exited.
Distributed $850 million; recouped $2.26 million.
Combining Blur’s first two seasons with Blast’s first season, the three airdrops totaled approximately $850 million. Once these tokens were distributed, the vast majority were sold immediately upon receipt. The moment the airdrops concluded marked the beginning of the projects’ decline.
The Blur protocol generated cumulative revenue of $2.26 million. Approximately $70.82 million in fees generated by users on the platform over three years flowed entirely to sellers and creators due to its zero-fee design. Blast accumulated approximately $13.85 million in on-chain fees, with roughly $7.83 million recognized as protocol revenue. By the time the shutdown was announced, the entire chain’s 24-hour revenue had fallen to just $110.
The official statement from Blast regarding the shutdown read: “Operational expenditures continue to exceed the revenue that can be captured by the Layer 2 network.”
Blur faced a similar trajectory. Monthly trading volume plummeted from $1.43 billion to less than $7 million by March 2026, a decline of 99.5%. The BLUR token fell from its launch-day high of $5.02 to $0.0095, a drop of 99.8%. According to DefiLlama, Blast’s TVL decreased from $2.26 billion to approximately $11.5 million at the time of shutdown. L2BEAT, using a broader statistical methodology, calculated that approximately $50 million in assets remained on-chain, with the discrepancy primarily attributable to ETH staked in Lido via bridge contracts.
Huang Licheng, also known as “Machi Big Brother,” is a major participant in Blur. Decrypt identified him as one of the largest lenders on the Blend lending protocol. In June 2024, he publicly called on Pacman via X to adjust mining rules; half a month later, he transferred approximately 18.4 million BLUR tokens to Binance. Spot On Chain estimated his losses at around $3.16 million.
The broader market environment offered little support. Overall NFT trading contracted, while the number of Ethereum Layer 2 solutions continued to expand. In October, Abstract, StandX, and ZetaChain sequentially announced shutdowns or migrations, and Farcaster changed ownership for the second time this year. Users and capital attracted by token expectations could not sustain operational costs once those expectations were either realized or disappointed.
The $850 million airdrop ultimately flowed into sell orders on the secondary market, leaving the project with an unpayable bill.
04 Two deadlines, one silent founder
Before October 26, Blast users could still withdraw funds normally via the official page. Afterward, while assets will not disappear, they can only be retrieved by interacting directly with the bridge contract on Ethereum. The official team stated that operational instructions would be published before the deadline.
On November 12, blur.io went offline, and Blend stopped matching new loans. Borrowers with outstanding Blend loans must repay them before this date; otherwise, they will be treated as defaults, and the collateralized NFTs will be transferred to the lenders. Blur stated that it would later provide tools to help users retrieve their assets from Blend. The only official account is @blur_io; do not trust any other notifications claiming to be official.
BLUR holders still retain governance rights over the protocol fee switch, but with the website shut down and trading nearly halted, flipping this switch would generate no revenue.
After Blur announced the shutdown of its platform, Cointelegraph contacted Pacman for comment, but his response was not included in the report. There is currently no public information regarding his next steps.
Three years ago, Pacman defeated OpenSea using a points-based system; two years ago, he attracted $500 million in deposits through interest incentives and invitation codes. Now, within ten days, he has shut down the two largest projects he built.
Points can buy users, but they cannot buy revenue. The next person to try this strategy will likely issue the same announcement one day: operating costs have exceeded revenue.