Exposing Blast Founder Pacman: From Dropping Out at 16 to a $1.6 Billion TVL Business Empire
Can Pacman change market sentiment again?Author: Pix
Compiled by: Shenchao TechFlow
This is Pacman, who dropped out of school at the age of 16. Now, he has a billion-dollar empire. Here is the untold story behind the founder of Blast and Blur.
In his teenage years, Pacman wanted to start a company. So, at 16, he cloned an existing startup and got hired by them. To work there, he dropped out of school and moved across the country, and within a year, his entire life changed.
At just 17, Pacman founded StrongIntro, a platform that helps tech startups build and grow engineering teams. Despite his hard work, going through YCombinator and raising $120,000, the project did not succeed as hoped, and this setback brought him back to square one.
Pacman realized that his next startup needed a co-founder. He decided to look in the best place: college. After two years at MIT, he finally found his business partner, Anthony Liu. Their partnership was further solidified after Pacman received a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship, allowing him to drop out and start a company.
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Together with Anthony Liu, Pacman founded Namebase, an on-chain website domain marketplace. The platform quickly gained attention, surpassing $10 million in trading volume within just three months and raising over $5 million in funding. The company was successful, but they decided to sell it two years later.
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In 2021, Pacman discovered NFTs and was immediately attracted. The first NFT he purchased (Blitmap) earned him 30 ETH, further fueling his interest. He began writing articles about the field and delving into its details. However, he noticed a significant lack of infrastructure in the NFT ecosystem.
In October 2022, Pacman took decisive action and created Blur, an NFT marketplace. Within a year, Blur became the largest NFT marketplace, thanks to some key features and strategic airdrops. Despite facing some criticism and comments like "Blur killed NFTs," the platform's success is undeniable.
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Pacman did not rest on his laurels; he launched Blast, the first L2 solution with native yield. Initially, the project faced a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). However, once Blast exited the testing phase, it experienced explosive growth, with people flocking to get airdrops.
Fast forward to now:
The first season airdrop has been released.
Blast has a total locked value (TVL) of $1.68 billion.
Over 1 million wallets are connected to the platform.
Despite these achievements, Blast still faces FUD, with the biggest question being: Can Pacman change market sentiment again?
