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Blast to shut down Ethereum layer-2 network after revenue falls short of operating costs

Blast says it will close its Ethereum layer-2 network because it no longer sees a credible path to economic sustainability. Its DeFi total value locked was about $31 million in early October, down more than 98% from a June 2024 peak of roughly $2.2 billion, while recent daily chain revenue was only tens or hundreds of dollars. Users are being asked to move assets to Ethereum; Blast expects withdrawals to pause for about a week as it unwinds Lido positions and says its normal interface will remain available through Oct. 26.

What changed Blast’s deposit base has contracted from roughly $2.2 billion at its June 2024 peak to about $31 million in early October, leaving very little fee income to support operations.

Why it matters Users face a more technically demanding recovery process after Oct. 26, even though their assets will remain recoverable.

What to watch next Blast expects the Lido unwind to take about a week and says it will publish instructions for contract-based withdrawals before the interface deadline.

Tesla deliveries beat analysts’ estimate, but third-quarter total remains below year-ago level

Tesla reported 486,532 third-quarter deliveries, about 5.3% above its company-compiled analyst consensus of 461,974, but 2.1% below the 497,099 delivered a year earlier. Production was 464,391, so deliveries exceeded output by 22,141 vehicles; the report says inventory built earlier in the year supplied that gap. Energy storage deployments were 13.7 GWh, below the 15.9 GWh analysts were said to expect, and Tesla shares closed up 4.65% at $370.59 on Oct. 2.

What changed Deliveries increased 1.3% from the second quarter but remained 2.1% below the year-earlier quarter, a sequential improvement rather than a return to year-over-year growth.

Why it matters For shareholders, the inventory draw makes the delivery beat an incomplete measure of operating strength: the release does not show what selling prices Tesla achieved.

What to watch next Third-quarter financial results are scheduled for after the close on Oct. 21, with a webcast at 4:30 p.m. Central Time.

Toshiba’s planned hard-drive expansion weighs on Seagate and Western Digital shares

After Nikkei Asia reported that Toshiba plans to invest about 60 billion yen ($380 million) in the Philippines to double hard-disk capacity for AI data centers within fiscal 2027, Seagate and Western Digital each fell about 10.2% on Oct. 2. The report frames the market reaction as a reassessment of how long hard-drive scarcity may support prices, rather than evidence that current AI-related demand has weakened. Toshiba’s plan and target market share were reported by Nikkei; AskTraders said Toshiba had not confirmed the plan.

What changed After roughly five years without a major hard-drive investment, Toshiba is reportedly planning new capacity and denser drives; its market-share target remains an ambition, not an achieved gain.

Why it matters If Toshiba delivers the expansion, storage buyers could gain leverage in longer-term supply negotiations, potentially weakening Seagate and Western Digital’s scarcity-based pricing power rather than their immediate shipment volumes.

What to watch next Whether Toshiba confirms the reported investment remains unresolved; the source records no company confirmation.

BNY and Kraken parent Payward discuss a broad digital-asset infrastructure partnership

BNY is in preliminary talks with Payward, Kraken’s parent, about a potential partnership spanning crypto products, custody, wealth management, trading, payments and financial-market infrastructure, according to two people familiar with the discussions. There is no guarantee of an agreement, and both companies declined to comment. The proposed work could involve Payward Services and may resemble aspects of Payward’s expanded relationship with Nasdaq, but the scope and economics remain unknown.

Why it matters For institutional clients, a deal could connect BNY’s asset custody and cash infrastructure with Payward’s trading and payment systems, extending the proposed service beyond cryptocurrency execution alone.

What to watch next The open question is whether talks produce a signed agreement and, if so, which services and commercial terms it covers.

NEAR Intents says it recovered all $3.8 million taken in a security breach

NEAR Intents General Manager Alex Shevchenko said on Oct. 2 that the full $3.8 million taken in a breach had been returned, ending the recovery effort before the deadline the protocol had set. Public address analysis showed about 34.59 Bitcoin moving into a designated recovery address, but the complete route for the remaining funds has not been publicly detailed. NEAR Intents attributed the incident to a bug involving its Omni deposit-and-withdrawal infrastructure and a smart contract; a technical post-mortem has not yet established precisely how the withdrawals were authorized.

What changed The incident has moved from a reported $3.8 million asset shortfall to management-confirmed full recovery, while the cause of the unauthorized withdrawals remains incompletely explained.

Why it matters Recovery reduces the funding burden on the protocol or its backers because NEAR Intents had already committed to reimbursing affected users; it does not by itself demonstrate that the security weakness is contained.

What to watch next The unresolved technical question is whether the authorization flaw affected only one withdrawal route or reflected a reusable weakness in the cross-chain infrastructure.

Research traces at least $761,725 in fees from swaps involving funds stolen in Bitget breach

Independent on-chain researcher Andrey Sergeenkov calculated that swaps involving assets traced from Bitget’s September breach generated at least $761,725 in identifiable fees for protocols and services through Oct. 2; about $573,226 was attributed to THORChain liquidity fees. A separate analysis identified approximately $259,718 in THORChain affiliate payments to seven recipients with additional transaction links to wallets involved in laundering routes. The research does not establish that those recipients controlled attacker wallets or knowingly facilitated laundering, and the fee calculations are not a measure of net profits.

Why it matters The findings show that liquidity providers and routing services can collect revenue from hack-linked flows without establishing knowing participation; fee exposure and culpability therefore require separate assessments.

What to watch next Who ultimately received some measured fees remains unresolved: the dataset does not allocate THORChain liquidity charges to individual providers or identify final recipients of CoW-related fees.