Blast Shutdown Highlights Economic Challenges for Ethereum Second Layers

The Ethereum chain Blast announced its shutdown on October 2, citing running costs exceeding revenue. This is not an isolated case, as second layers in the Ethereum orbit face similar economic challenges.

On the same day, a Shiba Inu developer, Kaal Dhairya, revealed that Shibarium's maintenance and development are funded by 'yours truly.' This means one person covers the costs of servers, data publication, and further development.

Shibarium has processed 1,804 transactions on October 4 with a network load of 0.0154 percent. The chain earns roughly $2.5 in fees per day, which is insufficient to cover its operational costs.