Opening Pacman's X homepage, the bio section still lists two lines: "Founder of Blur and Blast."

On October 13, Blur's official account announced that the frontend for blur.io would be discontinued on November 12. Eleven days earlier, on October 2, Blast had already declared operational shutdown, urging all users to withdraw their assets back to Ethereum mainnet by October 26.

Half a month, two projects—one a Layer 2 locking $2.26 billion in its own chain, the other once dominating over 70% of Ethereum NFT trading volume—both shut down entirely.

Pacman’s real name is Tieshun Roquerre; he’s known in Chinese communities as Tieshun. He first gained prominence through Blur: launched in 2022, it disrupted the then-dominant NFT marketplace OpenSea with faster matching, lower fees, and token incentives. By March 2023, over 70% of Ethereum’s NFT trading volume occurred on Blur, with that month’s trading volume reaching $1.43 billion.

Then he applied this model to the blockchain infrastructure space. In November 2023, Blast raised $20 million, with Paradigm listed among investors. Its core selling point was clear: the first Ethereum-native Layer 2 offering native yield for ETH and stablecoins, coupled with token rewards and airdrop expectations. The mainnet launched on March 1, 2024, but prior to launch, users had already deposited over $1.1 billion.

These two announcements mark the definitive end of everything described above.

Blast was at least transparent: the announcement stated that the ongoing operational costs of maintaining the L2 have exceeded revenue generated by the chain itself, and the team sees no credible path toward economic sustainability.

Blur insists it’s not dead—just that the frontend is being discontinued. But who would trade via a blockchain explorer?

This is a microcosm of the current wave of cryptocurrency project failures: no user adoption, no revenue.

Original: Lawful BlockBeats