Blast’s long-awaited airdrop of its Ethereum token Wednesday was met with ample price volatility, some apparent disappointment from users, and a surge in scammy tweets attempting to swipe the funds of eager traders. But the price did gradually rise over the course of the day.

The token debuted on Wednesday at around $0.025 but then cooled off, dipping to around $0.020. But over the course of the day, it gradually climbed to a high price above $0.029, easing some traders’ fears that BLAST would keep falling.

It’s dipped since then, however, sitting at a current price of about $0.024, per data from CoinGecko. It’s up around 10% over the past 24 hours.

The highly anticipated airdrop distributed approximately $354 million worth of Blast tokens to the community following months of incentives-driven hype around the network, creating initial excitement among users.

The Ethereum layer-2 scaling network, from the founder of NFT marketplace Blur, has grown into a community of about a million people within four months, according to a statement on its Twitter (aka X) account on Wednesday. 

However, the celebration that welcomed its launch was short-lived as scams and community discontent quickly surfaced.

Founder and chief investment officer of DeFiance Capital, Arthur Cheong, noted that the initial $2 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV) fell short of expectations. 

“Given how the previous L2 [have] been trading at launch,” Cheong tweeted, “I would have expected $5 billion FDV at least.”

“The days of highly anticipated infra projects trading at > $20 billion FDV at launch are probably over,” he added.

Apart from the initial valuation missing the mark, many members of its community were victims of scammers exploiting the frenzy surrounding the airdrop. 

Verified Twitter users with gold checks—offered to verified organizations and their employees or affiliates—were among those spreading fraudulent links and misleading information, leading to significant financial losses for some. 

This situation has drawn attention to the persistent vulnerabilities in the crypto space, especially during high-profile events like airdrops. At least a dozen accounts with gold checkmarks churned out fake information while impersonating the official Blast account.

“Be wary of accounts attempting to impersonate Blast,” the official X account of the token warned on Wednesday. 

According to Scam Snifer, a victim lost $218,000 to scammers hours after the launch “due to signing multiple phishing signatures.” Amid the chaos, Blast’s price experienced a sharp decline, causing disappointment among investors and enthusiasts.

Initially, the price plummeted as holders rushed to sell their airdropped tokens, driving down the market value. This steep drop in price was exacerbated by the negative sentiment stemming from the scams and overall dissatisfaction within the community.

Edited by Andrew Hayward