The market this morning

Blast, once a billion-dollar Ethereum layer-2, begins winding down as costs outpace revenue

By Crypto Info News

Good morning. The Ethereum layer-2 Blast is shutting down. Cointelegraph, Decrypt, The Block and CoinDesk all reported on Friday that the network is winding down after its operating costs came to exceed the revenue it generates. Blast has asked users to withdraw their assets to Ethereum mainnet, with Decrypt and The Block citing a deadline of Oct. 26.

Outlets differ on how large Blast once was. Decrypt described it as a network once worth $2.3 billion; CoinDesk put the peak at $2 billion and reported assets have since plunged 98%. The Block noted Blast was backed by Paradigm. The direction is not in dispute, even if the starting figure is.

Regulation ran through the day. CoinDesk reported that the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, accusing it of overstepping its authority in granting crypto trust charters. Separately, Decrypt reported that Circle urged the European Commission to loosen MiCA's bank-deposit and concentration rules for stablecoin reserves, siding with the ECB. On Cointelegraph's Chain Reaction, Bitpanda co-CEO Christian Trummer said MiCA has increased trust in regulated platforms and called for stricter enforcement. CoinDesk also profiled Jay Clayton, the former SEC chairman it reported may be tapped as crypto czar.

On security, Chainalysis said its investigators used AI to help trace the $387 million stolen from Bitget on September 24, which it attributed to North Korea. The Block reported Drift opened exploit-recovery claims, with initial payouts of just over 1% of user losses and no firm timeline for full repayment.

In business, Cointelegraph reported Anchorage Digital cut 17% of its workforce, citing a report, while CoinDesk said BNY is in talks with Kraken parent Payward over an infrastructure partnership.

Markets closed mixed. Bitcoin ended at roughly $84,506, down about 0.4% over 24 hours, with a market cap of about $1.698 trillion; Ether closed around $2,667.95, down about 1.38%. USDT and USDC held near $1.00. Decrypt reported Bitcoin heading higher after a jobs-report miss it said erased the odds of an October rate hike. Decrypt also reported Ethereum's zkAPI, which lets users prepay in USDC and query AI models without any single party seeing both their identity and their query.