The Innovative Gamification Points Strategy of Blast, a Pioneering Ethereum Layer 2 Blockchain

Blast is an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain that has unarguably succeeded in capturing user attention. It is the most degen L2 that exists, and unsurprisingly it has created huge hype around itself. This has been achieved with gamification which we’ll explore in detail. 

The Blast airdrop game is currently unfolding. Yet, it’s one of the most exciting combined points and airdrop strategies we’ve seen in crypto. This article delves into their captivating approach to points and gamification.

What is Blast?

The first and currently only Layer 2 blockchain that provides native yield. This means that users are earning by holding ETH or stablecoins on the blockchain. 

It was founded by Pacman, the founder of Blur - an NFT marketplace that came out of nowhere did a vampire attack on OpenSea resulting in Blur being now bigger than the previous leader based on trading volume but also having almost 4x market share. 

Blur vs Opensea was one of the biggest David vs Goliath battles in recent crypto history, won mainly due to the ingenious Blur reward program designed to drive long-term loyalty and liquidity. One of the coolest innovative features of that Blur campaign was a ‘loyalty score’ that helped users get a higher airdrop. It reflected how much a user favored Blur in listing his/her NFTs, and/or listed them for less on Blur.

Blast announcement 

Blast was announced on the 21st of November, and it quickly became a controversial topic. The bridge for transferring funds to Blast was a one-way one and the Blast blockchain was not even built when it was officially announced. 

Did this scare degens? 

Absolutely not. Less than two months after the announcement Blast had attracted >100K wallets and $1.3B in TVL. The team announced that the Blast Testnet was officially live, along with an initiative called the BIG BANG competition. And there the airdrop game started. 

The BIG BANG competition

What was it all about? Future builders on Blast had one month to submit their projects to the competition.

So winners had the chance to get in front of 100k+ users at the Mainnet launch. And not only that. 

Blast offered innovative tactics to get both users but also builders on its layer 2. It announced that it will split the future airdrop 50-50 between users and builders on Blast. And winners of the Blast Big Bang were going to get a part of the dev airdrop. The airdrop is to be used to incentivize growth for their projects resulting in better adoption. 

On top of that winners of “The Big Bang” competitions get connected to investors who could help them further by investing in the projects.

This resulted in over 3000 teams that registered for the competition! You can imagine the huge amount of teams interested in building on Blast. The better part of these teams started active communication on different channels, X spaces, AMA discussions, etc. talking about their projects and the Blast L2. 

Like any two-sided market, Blast faced a chicken-and-egg problem: without a strong ecosystem by builders, there’s no demand by users and vice versa. Blast tackled both components by announcing that their future airdrop would reward equally both builders and users. 

Four months after the initial Blast announcement and just 3 weeks after officially Blast mainnet went live, the blockchain has attracted > 500,000 wallet addresses with over $2,5 billion in crypto. 

Deep dive on the Airdrop and the gamification behind it

Blast points/airdrop game is mind-blowing. 

Talk about gamification. Their website itself looks like a game menu. 

Let's go through the most important gamification elements starting with referrals. 

1. Referrals

The only way for users to get to the airdrop page is by entering an invite code. Adds friction? Quite the opposite makes hundreds if not thousands of users share their invite codes in articles, newsletters, tweets, YouTube videos, you name it. 

There is even a Google Ads with the referral code in its URL link. 

If someone wants to find an invitation code, in a matter of 1 minute 10+ codes could be found. Once you add an invite code you get to a menu similar looking to a Galxe quest. And you see that the code was the first step in the Blast gamification journey toward the airdrop. It is the first hyperlink word part of the horizontal menu.

Next, further down, users see the following 3 steps:

2. Follow @blast_l2 on Twitter

3. Join Blast Discord

4. Bridge & Earn

Two social/community tasks and one more meaningful key action for the chain. 

2. Follow @blast_l2 on Twitter 

One of the most popular first tasks for most quests, points systems, and even airdrops. We would argue that 95% of projects should not have this task in their lists. Or at least not as a first task. Why? Because if you grow an X (Twitter) account with such tactics, then the number of followers becomes just the ultimate vanity metric. The vast majority of quest, points, and airdrop users are either just single users who have multiple accounts (usually in the dozens), or bots with hundreds of accounts or more. There are multiple web3 projects with 200-300-500 thousand followers accounts on X, that get between 5 and 20 likes on average on their tweets because of this. When you add these fake followers this often results in much worse engagement due to new followers not interacting with your content, but also X deletes bot accounts from time to time. If a project has a high percentage of such bot/inactive accounts following it, then it could result in further penalties related to the algorithm. That’s why on social media engagement metrics are much more important than the number of followers. 

Here specifically for Blast, we would say that the project doesn’t get much benefit from adding this task. But Blast has been able to create so much hype and controversy around itself and it has so many different tasks around its airdrop that the “follow Blast on Twitter” is net neutral, or even positive for the project. 

This has led to currently over 600K followers on X. 

While Blast's social media strategies, like requiring followers on Twitter and membership in their Discord server, have successfully boosted user numbers, they may benefit from a more engagement-focused approach. This could involve interactive content and community-driven events that encourage genuine participation rather than mere follower accumulation.

3. Join Blast Discord - currently over 150K members on Blast’s Discord.

Asking users to join a Discord server as part of a quest/points/airdrop is not much more useful for projects compared with “follow us on Twitter”. Here, newcomers who are not interested in actually being part of the community usually never visit the server again, or just spam a few times with “gm / gn”, “wen price go up” or “wen token/wen airdrop”. 

Furthermore, the Blast Discord server is currently not prepared to engage these new community members. There are basically just a few useful channels to which users can contribute: general, feedback and reports. But there are no channels like “meme”, “fun” “chit-chat” or similar -> a channel or channels in which community members will participate for the fun and will check them daily. 

What we would definitely change in the second and third quest tasks is the app permissions that Blast asks for. “Follow and unfollow people for you” is not something most users would be confident in and it makes no sense: why would Blast need this? Other apps like Galxe don’t ask for such permissions when connected to an X account. 

Same case with Discord, Blast asks for permission to “Join servers for you”, which is odd. 

Would this be an issue for users? We would guess that >95% of normal users don’t read the permissions for which such an app asks. So supposedly this doesn’t result in significant friction for users. Yet, better not to ask for such permissions. There is already enough controversy related to Blast.

4. Bridge & Earn

Bridging is the final step and most important step from the initial Airdrop window. Here users can bridge the following assets:

• ETH, WETH, or stETH, USDC, USDT, or DAI

What would we change here? It makes no sense to have USDC as a name of the coin, but to use Tether, which is the company behind USDT. 

Once you connect your wallet the airdrop transforms into a gamification beast.

5. Bridged

The 5th point from the gamification journey with Blast is “Bridged”.

It is the top sector under the menu and shows how much have you bridged. Every ETH or WETH that you bridge brings you a 4% native yield on Blast + Blast Points. And if you swap stablecoins like USDC for USDB -> this will bring you a 15% native yield. Users are shown that the more they bridge, the more yield and points they will be getting. 

At each section “Bridged”, “Multiplier”, “Points”, and “Blast Gold” users start from scratch, but can easily learn how to “Bridge More”, Earn multipliers, points, and gold with the dedicated section from the User Docs with comprehensive info on each of these topics. This is a good tactic to educate users who want to learn how to do what, but need more information.

Blast users' docs are generally well-written. One thing we would change, other than improving the docs by making them more comprehensive and detailed, and removing some errors like repetitive copy-paste content (how to earn with invites section is present twice) would be design-wise change. Currently, if you search for something in the Blast docs and hover over a result with the mouse, the result becomes extremely hard to understand due to the white font over the yellow background. 

[Bonus] 10x early adopter bonus

Users who bridged assets to Blast prior to the Mainnet launch had the opportunity to earn a 10x bonus on points earned during the early access phase. A strong move from Blast was that if an Early adopter user decides to remove even a part of his/her crypto from the L2, this will result in losing the potential 10x bonus. On top of that if early adopters use their balance for some Blast Dapps, then they won’t be able to get the full 10x bonus unless they bridge more assets. Once again strong incentive for users to move assets in one direction only towards Blast. 

6. Multiplier

By using some of the promoted Blast Dapps, users can earn points multipliers. The more such Dapps a user uses, the higher the multiplier and the more points he/she earns. Crypto points/airdrop program multipliers are not something new. But Blast does this part of the gamification cleverly too. How? 

• The Dapp multipliers are hidden behind blurred visuals. This piques users' curiosity and makes them come back to check when the multipliers are visible. 
• The multipliers don’t come all at once. As you can see from the screenshot below, the first two multipliers will be unlocked, and gradually the rest. This creates an incentive for users to stick around over a longer period of time -> leading to user retention. 

7. Points

From the point you bridge some of the eligible tokens your points start to accrue. There are a few important details here. 

• Points update in real time, which makes it fascinating for users to see how they are constantly growing.
• If a user switches to another tab from the browser and gets back to the airdrop tab in some time, the points balance quickly speeds up to the actual real-time balance. What is more fascinating than seeing numbers related to a reward to grow visibly and constantly? If the numbers do this quickly. 
• You see the rate of points per hour that you earn. This is another way to encourage users to increase their points balance by increasing the rate at which they earn points. Do more, and you’ll get more. 
• Points are accumulated to the hundredth. This enables even users with a smaller number of points earned per hour to see their points constantly growing quickly. 

8. Blast Gold 

What is Blast Gold? It’s the Dapp equivalent of points. 50% of the Blast Airdrop is allocated to Blast Gold. Gold is for Dapps, and unlike Points, Gold is distributed manually. The purpose of Points is to reward liquidity on Blast, and the purpose of Gold is to be used as incentive firepower that Blast Dapps can use for growth. The Blast incentives committee will distribute Gold on a 2-3 week cadence and announce publicly once Gold has been distributed. It is an additional way to reward users for engagement. 

Next section, you have DAPP Leaderboard, Multipliers, Invites and Activity

9. DAPP Leaderboard 

Showing how the different 50 dAPPs distribute Gold and Points. Here the gamification is once again directed towards both builders and users. Builders are incentivized to show users that their app is worth using. Users are incentivized to track from which apps have they received points and/or gold and use more of the Dapps. 

This is another way to encourage Dapps to redistribute their earned points to users rather than holding the points for themselves. 

Since users stop earning Points when they deposit funds into a smart contract, there is a slight disincentive for that user to use that smart contract. In order to remove that disincentive, smart contracts can redirect those Points back to their users according to their own internal metrics. This will automatically update the user’s Blast.io Points dashboard. A clever design to make Dapps redistribute points. 

10. Invites

We already looked into invites as a gamification tactic number 1. Here it’s worth getting back to it because it’s like the opposite side of a coin. At first, users had to find a referral code to join the Blast game. But here, users are now incentivized to start referring other users in order to get more points. 

Referrers earn 16% of the points earned by their invitees. On top of that, they get an additional 8% of points from their invitees. Of course, users also earn a % bonus on the Blast Gold that users who you invited earn, making this a multi-level referral program. 

Does this work? Ask thousands of MLM companies who have used this type of referral incentive pyramid for decades and keep using it successfully. 

11. Activity

The activity feed will show Point and Gold distributions from Dapps for yourself and globally. It is currently not live. Once it is, users would be able to see how and when other users get rewarded. Another way for users to get ideas on how to become more engaged with Blast and its Dapps. 

Let’s now go back to the horizontal menu. 

Leaderboard tab

• Here, interestingly users see at first place their own profile on top of the leaderboard, then the actual leaders. This makes users project themself to aim for the top but also shows them the huge difference between their earned gold and points compared with the leaders. 
• Users also can see who has invited the leaders from the leaderboard. The top users have currently close to 1.666 billion points. As mentioned referrers earn 16% of the points earned by their invitees and an additional 8% of points from their invitees. So users who referred the two leaders have received over 266 million points as a bonus so far. 
• On the right side of the leaderboard users can see “Recent Joins”. Every few seconds/minutes new users are joining being invited by user X. So another way of saying “Hey, users are joining who are invited by other than you. Find a way to refer as many users as possible to make bonus points.” Once again, strong incentive with the help of competitiveness. 

Devs Board 

As the name suggests it’s entirely focused on developers, who are building on top of Blast. With sections on why to build on Blast and what incentives in terms of airdrops could developers get. This further incentivizes developers to build successful Dapps on Blast and get users and an airdrop. 

[Bonus] Dapp airdrops of their own token

Blast also constantly encourages builders on Blast to create their own airdrops with which to further reward users. This has led to multiple Blast Dapps that have created their own quests or points programs that will result in an airdrop for users. 

Gamification evolution

Blast Gamification Engine is constantly evolving. The points and airdrop program is new, nevertheless it has already gone through multiple changes, that occur constantly. The team behind it looks like is actively conducting A/B testing of different stimuli and elements. 

Some of the already-gone elements included a Lucky wheel with point rewards that users were able to win. For every 1 ETH transferred to Blast, each week the participant could make one spin of the lucky wheel. For every tweet, you got a spin of the Lucky Wheel. This got users to another casino-like highly addicting game in which they could win free points. 

Summary

With Blast users get blasted by all types of incentives to get them addicted to the game. The L2 is winning through innovative in use and in number interconnected incentives to cultivate a vibrant ecosystem of diverse Dapps and users — all within a remarkably short span of 4-5 months. 

At the heart of Blast's success is a carefully crafted unmatched constantly evolving gamification strategy that encourages active participation and engagement from both developers and users.

The new Layer 2 commitment to equal reward distribution between users and builders underpins its strategy to solve the classic chicken-and-egg problem of ecosystem growth. By ensuring that incentives are evenly split, Blast effectively attracts and retains both key stakeholders.

The gamification elements extend to users through a multi-step engagement process. Each step is designed to deepen user investment in the ecosystem both in terms of the value of assets and also time that users spend to engage with the blockchain. 

In essence, Blast's approach to gamification transcends mere user acquisition, aiming instead to foster a deeply interconnected community of developers and users. This strategy not only accelerates the platform's growth but also lays a solid foundation for sustained long-term engagement and user retention in this L2.