起底Blast创始人Pacman：从16岁辍学到16亿美金TVL的商业帝国

Original author: Pix

Original translation: DeepTechFlow

This is Pacman, who dropped out at the age of 16. Now, he owns an empire worth tens of billions of dollars. Here is the untold story behind the founder of Blast and Blur.

When he was in his teens, Pacman wanted to start a company. So, at the age of 16, he cloned an existing startup and was hired by them. To work there, he dropped out of school and moved around the country, and within a year, his whole life changed.

Only 17-year-old Pacman founded StrongIntro, a platform that helps tech startups build and develop engineering teams. Despite his efforts and raising $120,000 through YCombinator, the project did not succeed as he had hoped, and this setback brought him back to square one.

Pacman realized that he needed a co-founder for the next venture. He decided to go to the best place to find one: college. After two years at MIT, he finally found his business partner, Anthony Liu. Their partnership was further strengthened after Pacman received a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Fellowship, which allowed him to drop out and start a startup company.

(See video)

Together with Anthony Liu, Pacman co-founded Namebase, an on-chain website domain marketplace. The platform quickly gained attention, with transaction volume exceeding 10 million US dollars in just three months and raising over 5 million US dollars in funding. The company achieved success, but they decided to sell the company two years later.

(See video)

In 2021, Pacman discovered NFT and was immediately attracted to it. His first NFT purchase (Blitmap) earned him 30 ETH, which further fueled 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 NFT,’ the platform’s success is undeniable.

(See video)

Pacman is not satisfied with the status quo, 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 and people flocked to get the airdrop.

Fast forward to now:

• The first season airdrop has been released.
• Blast has a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $1.68 billion.
• Over 1 million wallets connected to the platform.

Despite these achievements, Blast still faces FUD, and the biggest question is: Can Pacman change market sentiment again?

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