Blast is again garnering controversy after allegedly altering the license for Optimism\u2019s open-source codebase.<\/p>\n
Blast, the controversial Layer 2 from the team behind the leading NFT marketplace, Blur, has been accused of forking Optimism\u2019s code within minimal changes without giving credit to its original author.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 31, Pop Punk, the pseudonymous founder of Gaslite, posted side-by-side screenshots of the codebase for Optimism and Blast, alleging that Blast made a handful of changes to pass the code off as its own.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey Blast, It’s not very cash money of you to fork Optimism’s code, add a typo, remove a function, and then change the license,\u201d Pop Punk\u00a0tweeted<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWorth reminding that removing the license is literally one of the only things that you are not allowed to do with MIT,\u201d\u00a0added<\/a>\u00a0Pseudo, a researcher for Scroll.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Blast has not publicly addressed the accusation. The Defiant reached out to the team for commentary but is yet to receive a response.<\/p>\n Blast ruffled feathers across the Ethereum ecosystem in November when it announced an airdrop campaign promising \u201cnative\u201d yield for users that transfer ETH and stablecoin to a deposit contract while awaiting the launch of its network in February 2024.<\/p>\n Yields are generated by depositing stablecoins with MakerDAO and converting Ether into Lido\u2019s liquid staking token, stETH \u2014 which has garnered\u00a0criticism<\/a>\u00a0for failing to self-limit its dominance despite coming alarmingly close to controlling one-third of staked ETH\u2019s supply. Depositors also earned\u00a0points<\/a>\u00a0which are expected to qualify holders for an airdrop and cannot be redeemed until May.<\/p>\n Critics<\/a>\u00a0slammed the project for failing to ship any code and offering no security guarantees beyond a three-of-five multisig account. Yet Blast attracted nearly $500M worth of deposits within five days despite the concerns, and now holds\u00a0$1.34B<\/a>\u00a0in assets, according to DeBank.<\/p>\n On the same day, Optimism\u00a0flagged<\/a>\u00a0that it would transfer 30M OP ($87.3M) from its Foundation\u2019s general treasury wallets to a dedicated wallet for distributing funds for its third round of retroactive public goods funding (RetroPGF).<\/p>\n <\/p>\nBlast controversy<\/h2>\n
Optimism to distribute 30M OP as grants<\/h2>\n
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