Open Pacman's X homepage, where the bio still reads: Founder of Blur and Blast.
On October 13, Blur's official account announced that the blur.io frontend will be shut down on November 12. Eleven days earlier, on October 2, Blast had already announced its cessation of operations and urged all users to withdraw their assets to the Ethereum mainnet by October 26.
In half a month, two projects were shut down: one that locked $2.26 billion on its own L2 chain, and another that once accounted for 70% of Ethereum NFT trading volume.
Pacman's real name is Tieshun Roquerre, known in the Chinese community as Tieshun. He first gained fame through Blur: launched in 2022, it directly challenged the then-dominant NFT marketplace OpenSea with faster order matching, lower fees, and token incentives. By March 2023, over 70% of all NFT trades on Ethereum occurred on Blur, with monthly trading volume reaching $1.43 billion.
He then applied this strategy to the public chain space. In November 2023, Blast secured $200 million in funding, with Paradigm listed as an investor; its key selling points were straightforward—the first Layer 2 on Ethereum offering native yields on ETH and stablecoins, plus expectations for points and airdrops. Before its mainnet launch on March 1, 2024, users had already deposited over $1.1 billion.
These two announcements bring a close to all of the above.
Blast has been relatively honest. The announcement stated that the ongoing costs of maintaining this L2 have exceeded the revenue generated by the chain, and the team sees no credible path to economic sustainability.
Blur also emphasized that it is not dead, only the frontend has been disabled. But who would go to a blockchain explorer to make transactions?
This is a microcosm of the current wave of cryptocurrency project failures—no users, no revenue.
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