Blast
Blast: Blockchain or Layer 2 ecosystem resource for crypto users and developers.
ABAB Structured Brief
Blast is indexed in ABAB Crypto Map under Blockchains & L2. This page keeps the official site, category, tags, and related ABAB coverage together as a searchable crypto project profile. Official domain: blast.io.
Related News & Analysis
Ethereum Layer 2 Network Blast Announces Shutdown on October 2
Blast shuts down due to maintenance costs exceeding revenue The Ethereum Layer 2 network Blast announced its closure on October 2. The team stated that maintenance costs have exceeded Layer 2 revenue, and they s...
Ethereum Layer 2 Network Blast Announces Shutdown Due to Maintenance Costs Exceeding Revenue
Blast shuts down due to maintenance costs exceeding revenue The Ethereum Layer 2 network Blast has announced its shutdown, citing that maintenance costs have exceeded revenue, and the team has determined there i...
a16z Closed-Door Debate: From Existential Risk (X-Risk) Regulatory Traps, Internal Network Agent Protection to New Paradigms in Probabilistic Programming
1. Core Controversy: "Pacing" or Regulatory Capture? • The open letter from Anthropic founder Dario Amodei has sparked intense debate in the industry: • The frontier large model safety and sandbox isolation initiative proposed by Dario and others is reasonable at the pure technical engineering level; • However, the focus of the controversy lies in the narrative packaging of "pacing" and the so-called "existential risk (X-Risk)". • The logical flaw of the concept of "pacing": • Lack of a reference frame: There has never been a publicly agreed benchmark speed for technological evolution. Announcing "we have decided to slow down" when no one knows the original completion node is essentially similar to the media claiming "the unannounced Apple car has been delayed," which lacks measurable standards for a self-consistent narrative. • A middle ground that pleases neither side: Attempting to walk a compromise between the internal extreme pause faction (Pause/Doomer) and external regulatory bodies has resulted in radicals accusing it of "just slowing down instead of stopping," while regulators deem it as "acknowledging the existence of harm yet still racing ahead." • Reflecting on the moral coercion of "existential risk (X-Risk)": • Historically, nuclear weapons development teams were well aware of their absolute lethality on a physical level, thus establishing the highest level of national control mechanisms; • If the heads of large model laboratories genuinely believe there is a 10% probability of human extinction, the only ethical response would be a complete halt or total nationalization; • The reality is contradictory: If one side portrays extinction risk while continuing to accelerate financing and pushing into the commercial market, it can easily be exploited by politicians, leading to excessive regulatory capture that could strangle startups and the open-source ecosystem. 2. Historical Reflection: From Nuclear Bombs, Early Internet Viruses to Regulatory Lag • Prerequisites of the "Fact Pattern" in policy-making: • The automotive industry was already widespread in the early 20th century, and it wasn't until Ralph Nader published "Unsafe at Any Speed" in the 1960s that stringent safety regulations were formed; • The aviation industry experienced a 40-year period of technical trial and error from the Wright brothers' first flight to the establishment of a complete FAA airworthiness certification system; • Traditional regulation must be based on specific damages that have occurred and a clear causal chain; attempting to implement "predictive legislation" before technology has matured is almost certain to stifle innovation. • If we were to apply today's fear paradigm to the Internet of the 1990s, it would never have emerged: • In the era of Windows 95 and early PCs, connected computers faced widespread risks from worm viruses and network interruptions (for example, the Morris worm paralyzed 10% of backbone networks, leading to frequent disconnections and business losses); • At that time, Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) targeting specific system intrusion cases; if the Internet's underlying infrastructure had been completely locked down in 1994 out of fear of hackers, the modern digital economy would not exist. • The potential spread risk of the European GDPR model: • Europe, lacking local underlying tech giants, tends to legislate aggressively in compliance and antitrust areas; • Beware of Europe refining regulation into a "digital airbag reminder" for AI Agents—where every time an Agent calls an external API or performs file read/write, a GDPR-like disclaimer confirmation box pops up, ultimately leading to widespread user cognitive numbness. 3. The Real New Security Front: Engineering Threats from the Emergence of Internal Network Agents • The complete failure of traditional internal network security assumptions: • Past IT and enterprise information security were based on an implicit assumption: 95%-99% of internal employees comply with regulations most of the time, with malicious insiders being a very low probability event. • Internal GitHub, Slack, approval flows, and financial reimbursement systems often lack strict concurrency throttling, relying solely on single sign-on (SSO) and coarse-grained identity authentication. • Agent swarms as "internal network distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS)": • When internal employees start to batch schedule thousands of autonomous Agents to write code, call APIs, and run automated tests, the software behavior is structurally identical to high-frequency DDoS attacks. • Agents possess rapid retry and tireless characteristics, easily exhausting internal microservice resources in a dead loop, and may even trigger dangerous data overwrites due to misunderstanding instructions. • Next-generation operating systems and permission granularity innovation: • The existing operating system permission system is too crude (either fully open or frequently prompting for confirmation); • There is an urgent need to reconstruct the underlying security stack to support fine-grained dynamic permission isolation (e.g., instantaneous read/write control for specific folders, adaptive API rate monitoring, and audit tracking), shifting the security focus from the metaphysical level of species survival back to concrete engineering defenses. 4. Paradigm Shift: The Rise of the Jev Model and the Return of Probabilistic Programming • The essential conflict between natural language interaction and traditional software systems: • The industry has previously focused on a "text input, text output" chat model, but forcing structured software to parse unstructured long text is extremely costly and error-prone; • Relying on complex prompt constraints and schema validation cannot guarantee 100% deterministic output and wastes enormous computational costs and response delays on meaningless question-and-answer redundancy. • The core breakthrough of the Jev model: from "generating text" to "semantic decision-making": • The input remains semantic context, but the output completely abandons generative text; • Among a given set of discrete options or routing conditions, it directly returns the optimal decision and precise probability distribution with extremely high throughput and low latency; • This completely overturns inefficient chat box interactions, allowing traditional software code to directly use large model outputs as the basis for logical branching decisions. • The revival of half a century of computer science legacy: • The core proposition of programming languages in the early 1960s-1970s was simulation and probabilistic modeling (e.g., handling ballistic trajectories, wind fluctuations, and other non-deterministic physical systems); • Modern software code has long been limited to Boolean algebra (absolute certainty of if/else); • With the implementation of Jev-like architectures, the core programming paradigm is shifting entirely to condition branches based on probabilistic confidence (if x% then ...), seamlessly integrating probabilistic language models with classical deterministic software engineering. 5. The Shift of Innovation Focus: From the Base Model Layer to the Model Periphery • The "critical mass dilemma" at the giant platform layer: • Leading large model laboratories are currently mired in maintaining large infrastructure operations, resolving alignment disputes, and managing massive user compatibility, severely dispersing their focus, making it difficult to optimize all vertical scenarios from the platform layer. • The autonomous evolution of application layers and peripheral tools: • The history of the software industry shows that core innovations often emerge outside the platform (analogous to the "Sherlocking" process where third-party independent tools are integrated into systems); • Large models are no longer merely revered as ultimate deities but are evolving into standard underlying components like databases and compilers; the core technological moat of future software is shifting entirely to how to reconstruct contextual systems, state persistence, and high-reliability business flows around the model's periphery.
Base Creator Jesse Pollak Says Stocks Drive Tokenization Cycle
...r. Pollak also opposed the notion that the closure of Blast and Abstract signifies the end of Layer 2 experiments. He believes Layer 2 needs differentiated products and distribution strategies. The interview did no...
Blender + Higgsfield Zero-Cost Camera Control: Say Goodbye to AI Video Wastes and Computing Power Waste
1. Core Pain Points and the New Workflow Revolution: From "Blind Card Drawing" to "3D Previs" 1. The Fatal Flaw of Traditional Text-to-Video • Huge Computational Consumption (Burning Credits): Traditional pure text prompts for generating videos are like "blind box draws"; camera drift, spatial flips, and character position breakdowns occur extremely frequently, often consuming a large number of generation points without yielding usable shots. • Complex Spatial Interaction Failure: Pure text is difficult to precisely define complex camera movements, multi-person eye-line alignment, and specific object motion trajectories. 2. 2026 Core Solution: Higgsfield + Blender Plugin Interaction • Film-Level Previs (3D Previs) Preceding: Before consuming any generation points, fully lock the camera trajectory, character blocking, editing rhythm, and focal length animation in 3D software. • Full-Process Collaborative Toolchain: • Claude: Responsible for natural language parsing and 3D scene code construction. • Hixel Plugin / Bridge: Acts as a connecting bridge between Claude and Blender, forcing AI to adhere to strict 3D production standards. • Blender: Hosts geometric gray models, camera motion effects, and viewport quick rendering. • Higgsfield (Cinema Studio): Inputs video references and second-level prompts to achieve pixel-level high-quality final generation. 2. Core Environment Setup and Three-End Synchronization Process 1. Quick Connection Configuration • Install Plugin: Download the free Hixel plugin from Higgsfield, obtain a dedicated Bridge URL, and configure the connector. • Blender Integration: Drag the plugin directly into Blender for installation and login, allowing the Hixel toolbar and asset panel to be called up within the viewport, supporting scene generation and 3D model import. • Claude Mode Setting: In Claude collaboration, it is recommended to switch to Co-work mode and set the construction parameters for efficient operation, ensuring smooth driving of Blender entity generation through natural language commands. 2. Gray Model Video Asset Export Specifications (Playblast) • Export Format: 1920 × 1080 resolution (standard 16:9), 24 fps film frame rate, MP4 encapsulation. • Viewport Snapshot Rendering: A complete set of camera movement reference videos can be quickly exported in just 15 seconds without spending time on deep material rendering. 3. Practical Case Demonstration and Camera Control Techniques 1. Complex Continuous Shot • Scene Requirements: Corridor traversal, character tracking, semi-circular following, full-body side tracking, and cutting into a top-down panoramic shot. • Text-Driven Gray Model Generation: Describe the corridor and character movements to Claude, which automatically arranges the tracks in Blender and adds wall details, multi-camera compositions, and lens animation based on the instructions. • Second-Level Prompt Rewriting (Reverse Prompting): Feed the 15-second reference video rendered from Blender's viewport back to Claude, requesting it to write precise Higgsfield camera control prompts according to the "second-by-second" rhythm in the video. • Final Effect Comparison: Compared to the drift and deformation during pure text generation, the results generated with gray model references maintain precise camera movements, perfectly presenting camera pushes, pulls, and corner reveals. 2. Complex Multi-Person Dialogue Scene (6-Person Round Table Meeting) • Multi-Character Interaction Challenges: In traditional AI videos, multi-person dialogues easily result in spatial flips, seat swaps, and mismatched eye lines. • 4-Camera Combination Previs: Build a 6-person round table seating arrangement in Blender using basic geometric blocks, presetting 4 specific shot positions, over-the-shoulder shots, and eye contact points. • Handheld Micro-Shake Effect Simulation: Directly input commands in Claude to add a slight "handheld camera" natural shake to the originally overly mechanical smooth camera movements. • Dialogue and Shot Depth Binding: Claude masters the complete camera position timeline, allowing it to directly match and generate precise character dialogue scripts for different shots. 3. Commercial Advertising and Speed Ramping • Dynamic Advertising Pain Points: Fast-paced advertisements for beverages, food, etc., require quick cuts, freezes, and rapid advances, which are difficult to control with pure text. • Skipping Fluid Calculations: In the Blender gray model, there is no need to spend time calculating liquids; leave them black or white and let downstream AI automatically add splashes and liquid physics effects. • Speed Ramping: Set the camera to rapidly approach, pause, freeze, and then smoothly accelerate to the next shot in 3D animation, achieving an advertisement-level rhythm in a single generation. 4. High-Speed Car Chase Scene (30 Seconds, 19 Shots) • Huge Project Scheduling: The scene includes 2 characters, 1 car, and a block, arranging a full set of camera arrays around the vehicle, with a one-click switch of lens focal lengths. • Physical Inertia Transfer: Carefully adjust the lateral acceleration response of characters in the gray model (lateral G-value drift shake), allowing AI to perfectly map the tension and fearful micro-expressions of gray model actions to the final footage. 4. Ultimate Commercial Value: Extreme Decoupling of Structural Skeleton and Style Layer 1. "Step-by-Step Decoupling" Theory (Structural vs. Style) The video reveals the core rule for professional film studios to reduce costs and proposals: split each generated prompt into two independent halves: • Structural Layer: 3D reference video, shot cut points, camera movement speed, and physical timelines locked by Blender gray models. This part is permanently locked once finalized. • Style Layer: Defines the visual texture, rendering style, character appearance, and material quality of the image. 2. One Skeleton, Infinite Style Switching in Seconds • Complete Multiple Version Proposals in One Day: Based on the same 30-second car chase gray model in Blender, simply changing the style prompts can achieve fully frame-for-frame aligned generation of various artistic styles: • 2.5D Semi-Realistic Stereo Style • 2D Paper Watercolor Illustration Style • 3D Toy Figurine Stop-Motion Style • Client Proposal Dimensionality Reduction: In commercial client proposals, clients first confirm the 3D shots and editing rhythm (Previs), then provide multiple different styles for selection within the same day, eliminating the need to redo each time, achieving dimensional optimization of commercial delivery efficiency and computational costs.
Former Star Public Chain Daily Revenue Drops Below $100
In the past 24 hours, the revenue of Blast listed on DeFiLlama's public chain list was $124, ranking 68th. A number of chains that were once considered star networks have daily revenues below this amount. The snapshot is...
A Day in the Life of a Billionaire: Wealth, Longevity, and Life Lessons from an 82-Year-Old Pharmaceutical Tycoon
"Day in the Life of a Miami Billionaire" (Interview video by School of Hard Knocks, host James deeply interviews biotech tycoon Robert Duggan, whose net worth exceeds $10 billion). Here are the key points summarized: 1. Background and Birth of the Anti-Cancer Pharmaceutical Empire • Assets and Business Achievements: Robert Duggan currently has a net worth exceeding $10 billion (Decabillionaire). He took over a struggling biotech company, Pharmacyclics, transforming it into a cancer treatment giant, ultimately selling it for a staggering $21 billion, with personal earnings exceeding $1 billion in a single day. • Driven by a Personal Mission: The turning point in his entry into the pharmaceutical industry was the unfortunate death of his 26-year-old son from glioblastoma (brain cancer). He vowed to dedicate himself to conquering cancer, turning his pain into a lifelong mission of developing anti-cancer drugs. • Humble Beginnings and Ups and Downs: Growing up in a modest family (his father earned only $800 a month while raising five children). In the early days of his entrepreneurship, he grew $5,000 to $3.6 million, then lost it all down to $600,000 due to mistakes; after painful lessons, he recalibrated his goals, donating $200,000 to the church, and focused entirely on achieving success. 2. Business Investment Philosophy and Long-Termism • "What If Things Go Right?": • Most people are overly anxious about "what if things go wrong" when making decisions, leading to internal conflict. • His early mentor taught him the most important mindset shift: focus not on worrying about losing money, but on how to make things happen and create value. • Three layers of business priorities and infrequent trading: • When founding and holding a company, one must adhere to the principle: customers first, shareholders second, and the founder last. • He resolutely avoids short-term stock trading, always going all-in to accompany the company's growth until the entire company is sold. • The essence of business is to create sustainable value (Viable & Self-sustaining): the underlying logic of business is to provide enough value to others to achieve self-sustaining returns; as long as human pain and problems are genuinely solved, profit is a natural byproduct. 3. The 24 Traits of Genius and the 'Winner's Mindset' • Caltech Psychological Research: Genius traits can be acquired: • Research on the 24 common traits of genius hangs in his office. It emphasizes that genius is not innate; anyone can cultivate traits such as focus, resilience, communication, and drive. • Focus on the future, do not dwell on losses (Don't introvert on losses): • The real difference between losers and winners: losers often give up after three failures and are trapped by failure; winners are often those who experience the most failures (possibly 20 times), but they never wallow in self-pity; instead, they learn from each failure and keep moving forward. • Action is the cure for everything: he believes "depression often arises from not being busy and focused." Humans are born to create and produce; staying busy and passionate about the future naturally revitalizes the spirit. 4. The Path to Longevity, Mindset, and Lifestyle at Age 82 • "Never let the old man in": • At 82, he remains sharp-minded and energetic. He quotes his friend Clint Eastwood, reminding himself to refuse to accept aging and a negative retirement mindset, always viewing himself as a creator with new abilities. • Maintaining extremely disciplined habits: every morning, he takes an ice bath at 38°F (about 3.3°C), loves cycling (climbing for 1.5 hours daily in Costa Rica), surfing, and swimming. • Living in Miami and Reflecting a Childlike Heart: • Residing in a $35 million penthouse on the 57th floor in Miami, he releases homemade balsa wood planes from his balcony daily to maintain a childlike spirit. • He enjoys the youthful energy and entrepreneurial ecosystem gathered in Miami (such as Ken Griffin, Bezos, etc., investing and creating here). 5. Ultimate Life Message • True Legacy: He hopes to be remembered not just for his wealth but for helping humanity continue, expand, and enjoy life, awakening more people's latent genius traits and divine potential. • Maintain Honesty: Always adhere to brutal truth in business and life, do not deceive, do not take shortcuts, and strive to solve problems.