Original | Odaily
Author | Azuma
On February 24th, Beijing time, Blast, an automatic interest-generating Layer 2 network newly launched by Pacman, the new generation "economic model genius" and founder of Blur, officially announced the final results of the BIG BANG ecological application competition.
Perhaps because Blast has promised to provide a 50% airdrop reward of the total token supply to projects deployed on the network, many projects have expressed their intention to join the network even before the testnet was launched.
In mid-January, Blast officially launched its testnet (the mainnet will launch on February 29th) and opened the registration window for the BIG BANG competition for developers. In the end, more than 3000 teams registered to participate, competing for potential token airdrop rewards and VC exposure opportunities.
According to the competition results, a total of 118 potential projects were selected in this round of BIG BANG, including 47 winners, 31 runner-ups, and 40 honorable mentions, covering various sectors such as lending, DEX, derivatives, GambleFi, NFT/Gaming, and Infra.
To help everyone select more valuable investment/interaction targets from the massive Blast ecosystem projects, Odaily has sorted out all 47 winners projects and some high-quality runner-ups and honorables based on the above award list, project positioning, funding history, and airdrop allocation mechanism (some projects will distribute developer airdrop shares back to users). We hope to further enhance your understanding of the booming Blast ecosystem.
Related reading: "New Wealth Code? A Checklist of 118 Unmissable Early Opportunities on Blast (Derivatives Edition)."
In this article, we will first focus on the "Spot DEX" section that users are most familiar with, according to the results of the BIG BANG competition, the awards in this section are as follows:
Five winners projects: Ambient Finance, Thruster, Bebop, Mangrove, Ring Protocol;
Three runner-ups projects: Bladeswap, Blaster Swap, MonoSwap;
Two honorable mention projects: Definitive, RogueX.
Next, Odaily will conduct a microscopic analysis of the above projects based on project positioning, financing history, airdrop allocation mechanism, and other factors.
Project One: Ambient Finance
Social media account: @ambient_finance
Awards: Winners
Funding history: In July 2023, Ambient Finance completed a $6.5 million seed round of funding, led by BlockTower Capital with participation from Jane Street, Circle, Tensai Capital, Naval, Yunt Capital, Susa Ventures, Quantstamp, and Hypotenuse Labs. Individual investors include Julian, co-founder of Ribbon Finance, and Steven, a researcher at The Block.
According to the official website, prior to the seed round, Ambient Finance also received funding from PostiveSum and Motivate in the Pre-Seed round, but no further information about this round of funding has been disclosed.
Developer airdrop allocation mechanism: Not disclosed
Introduction: Ambient Finance, formerly CrocSwap, is an improved AMM protocol that supports centralized liquidity provision within a single liquidity pool (similar to Uniswap V3), comprehensive liquidity provision (similar to Uniswap V2), and on-chain limit orders.
Project 2: Thruster
Social media account: @thrusterfi
Awards: Winners
Funding history: In the official documentation, Thruster states, "We are grateful to receive direct support from some of the best builders and liquidity providers in the DeFi industry. These individuals include DCFGod, PopcornKirby, B1lurr, CBB0FE, Casey Caruso (former Paradigm partner), 0x Lawliette, Loomdart, and many other founders and angel investors focused on DeFi."
Developer airdrop allocation mechanism: In the official documentation, Thruster introduction states, "Once we receive the developer airdrop of BLAST, we will use a unique mechanism to direct the incentives from the airdrop pool to some key partnership pools to promote Thruster's liquidity fitness and attract more users."
Introduction: Thruster supports multiple types of AMM liquidity provision, including concentrated liquidity provision (similar to Uniswap V3), full-range liquidity provision (similar to Uniswap V2), and stablecoin liquidity provision (similar to Curve).
Project Three: Bebop
Social media account: @bebop_dex
Award situation: Winners
Funding history: None (Incubated by Wintermute)
Developer airdrop allocation mechanism: Not disclosed
Introduction: Bebop is a DEX aggregator incubated by Wintermute. It is both an application and an API designed to provide users with efficient and seamless spot trading services. Worth mentioning, Bebop explicitly stated on its official website that there will be no tokens.
Project Four: Mangrove
Social media account: @mangrovedao
Award situation: Winners
Funding History: In July 2021, Mangrove completed a $2.7 million seed round of financing with participation from Wintermute Ventures, QCP Soteria Node, Monday Capital, Noia Capital, Zeeprime, Atka Capital, Stake Capital, and John Lilic.
In February 2023, Mangrove completed a $7.4 million Series A round of financing led by Cumberland and Greenfield Capital, with participation from CMT and Gumi Crypto Capital.
Developer Airdrop Allocation Mechanism: 100% returned to Mangrove users.
About Mangrove: Mangrove is an order book DEX that stands out for its "restaking" mechanism, which allows liquidity providers to redeploy liquidity deployed on other protocols to Mangrove's order book, thus expanding potential revenue opportunities. Mangrove does not lock this liquidity but only lists it. Users can still operate their liquidity normally within other protocols and it will only be utilized when an offer is accepted.
Project Five: Ring Protocol
Social Media Accounts: @ProtocolRing
Awards: Winners
Funding History: None
Developer Airdrop Allocation Mechanism: Not disclosed
Introduction: From the UI of the testnet, Ring Protocol is a classic AMM model DEX and will launch a Launchpad service in the future. According to the award introduction, the characteristic of Ring Protocol is that it allows liquidity providers to earn income by staking underlying assets and/or RWA assets.
Project 6: Bladeswap
Social media account: @bladeswapxyz
Awards: Runner-Ups
Funding history: None
Developer airdrop distribution mechanism: 100% returned to Bladeswap users.
Introduction: Bladeswap is an AMM DEX driven by the ve governance model. Its biggest feature is that it will return 100% of the platform fees to token holders. Bladeswap has clearly stated in its official documentation that it will launch the protocol token before BLAST to ensure that users receive as many airdrops as possible.
Project 7: Blaster Swap
Social media account: @BlasterSwap
Awards: Runner-Ups
Funding history: None
Developer airdrop distribution mechanism: 100% returned to Blaster users.
Introduction: Blaster is a DeFi aggregator with a batch exchange feature that allows users to achieve multiple exchanges in a single transaction using the best paths and prices.
Project Eight: MonoSwap
Social media account: @monoswapio
Awards: Runner-Ups
Funding history: None
Developer airdrop allocation mechanism: 100% returned to MonoSwap users. The official announcement about airdrop distribution and mainnet launch will be made in the coming days.
Introduction: MonoSwap is an AMM-type DEX that supports centralized liquidity provision (similar to Uniswap V3), all-range liquidity provision (similar to Uniswap V2), and Launchpad services.
Project Nine: Definitive
Social media account: @DefinitiveFi
Awards: Honorables
Funding history: In November 2023, Definitive completed a $4.1 million funding round with BlockTower leading and participation from Nascent, Coinbase Ventures, CMT Digital, and others.
Developer airdrop allocation mechanism: Not disclosed
Introduction: Definitive is an institutional-grade trading platform created by three former Coinbase product and engineering personnel, dedicated to providing an integrated execution platform for various protocols, allowing users to trade, profit, and automatically monitor the risk level of their positions.
Project Ten: RogueX
Social Media Account: @Roguex_io
Achievements: Honorables
Funding History: None
Developer Airdrop Distribution Mechanism: 100% returned to RogueX users.
Introduction: RogueX is a DEX that supports both spot and contract trading. The platform has just announced that it will airdrop 100% of BLAST developer tokens and 32% of the total supply of ROX tokens to the community as incentives during the Blast mainnet launch.
Sequel Preview
This article focuses only on the "Spot DEX" section, and highlights 10 early-stage projects that provide spot trading services within the Blast ecosystem out of a total of 118 potential projects.
In the next article, we will shift our focus to the "Derivatives" section. Please stay tuned and join us in unraveling the ecological blueprint of Blast.
Update: For the "Derivatives" section, please refer to "A New Wealth Code? A Checklist of 118 Early Opportunities on Blast (Derivatives Section)".
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