Blast, a rising Ethereum layer-2 scaling network from the founder of NFT marketplace Blur, has finally announced a launch date for its upcoming BLAST token airdrop: June 26. That’s later than expected.

“We know this is past our initial estimate of May and we’re sorry for the delay,” the official network account wrote on Twitter. “The airdrop allocation will be increased to account for this.”

According to Blast, the network will hold two more distributions of Blast Gold points before the token launch. Blast Gold works like airdrop points but for creators of decentralized apps (dapps) building on the network. Many dapps have then distributed their awarded gold to users—including Fantasy Top, the viral NFT game based around Crypto Twitter influencers.

Half of the token airdrop will be allotted to developers through Blast Gold. The other half will be distributed to early users, including those who bridged funds to the network before the Blast mainnet went live at the end of February. Users had bridged over $2.3 billion worth of crypto in the hopes of earning points toward the upcoming airdrop.

And there's a good reason they’re interested, beyond the typical crypto trader search for yield: Blast is aggressively built around user incentives, much like Blur before it, and that has worked out well for both Blur and its users. The NFT marketplace handed out some $818 million worth of tokens to traders in 2023, catapulting Blur above the competition and making it the second most valuable airdrop of last year.

Blast has seen rising momentum around some of its early apps, games, and tokens, including the aforementioned Fantasy Top, which has dominated the Crypto Twitter conversation in recent weeks while driving an increase in NFT trading volume. Pacmoon, a meme coin propelled by viral content creation incentives, has also continued to gain, setting a new all-time high price last week.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.