February was a huge month for the new entrant Blur, an NFT marketplace aimed at NFT traders, who is challenging OpenSea for the top spot.
This article explores the BLUR NFT marketplace, token, and airdrop program. We’ll also see how it is affecting the overall NFT ecosystem.
Let’s start with a comparison chart between Blur and Opensea:
Not bad for a marketplace that launched its platform in October 2022, Is it? OpenSea has always been the leader in the NFT marketplace, having launched more than six years ago. In 2022, Opensea had more than 1 million registered users. However, its market share is now being threatened, not by Rarible nor Element Market, but by a newcomer: Blur.
This NFT marketplace only had its first day of trading on February 14, Valentine’s Day. But it’s now the fastest NFT marketplace to come on board. It has, within days, overtaken OpenSea as the most popular marketplace. A Fortune report suggests Blur raked in $1.04 billion in sales volume. It is currently grabbing market share and could reshuffle the cards of NFT marketplaces.
On February 15th, the NFT Blur marketplace surpassed number 1 OpenSea after it launched 360 million tokens via airdrop. So, Blur marked its “season 1 ” with the airdrop campaign and its distribution of “care packages.” That sees Blur register more trading volume in terms of NFT on the Ethereum network than OpenSea, according to Nansen.ai.
Indeed, Blur’s trading volume has quadrupled since the launch of the platform’s native token. On February 15th, Blur accounted for 6602 ETH in trading volume against 5649 ETH for OpenSea. At the moment of writing this article, Coin Market Cap reports that BLUR, the native token of Blur, is trading at around $0.507.
The launch has been discussed extensively recently and has benefitted the NFT marketplace.
To extend its hard-earned popularity on the NFT marketplace, Blur has announced plans to launch another set of $300 million token airdrops. It is also aimed at its most loyal users. This loyalty program will mark “season 2” of the platform’s objectives.
These are given to:
With this new loyalty system, Blur allows users, even beginners, to earn free tokens. Unfortunately, Blur does not specify the duration of its loyalty program.
According to the company’s statements, Season 2 will mark the start of token distribution to traders in a more gamified program. As a result, each user will have a loyalty score. The score will depend on their engagement and interactions with the crypto platform.
In addition, a 100% loyalty score will be awarded to users who intend to avoid buying NFTs or trading them on another marketplace. Thus, the BLUR token reward will be determined based on the amount of NFT transactions and his loyalty score.
Blur’s daily trading volume increases following a blog post on “How to earn royalties on Blur.” In the blog, Blur recommends that creators stop their OpenSea listings. According to the platform, this will qualify them for full royalties from Blur.
Blur is capitalizing on “conflicting rules” preventing artists from simultaneously collecting royalties on OpenSea and Blur. As a result, more than 13,000 addresses canceled their OpenSea orders last week to qualify for Blur’s program. According to a dashboard from Dune Analytics, Blur has seized 82% market share of the Ethereum trading volume over the during first 2 weeks in February.
Facing increasing competition from new rival, Blur, OpenSea announced it would temporarily remove its 2.5 % commission on sales. It has also announced it will reduce creator royalties as it tries to stay relevant in an ever-evolving and rapidly changing market. That also means more and more competition in the NFT marketplace.
Removing its marketplace fee on transactions for a “limited time” leads to removing the primary source of revenue from the marketplace.
OpenSea also announced that it would only impose a mandatory creator royalty fee of 0.5% of the sales amount on projects. However, sellers may choose to pay a higher percentage.
This decision represents a severe setback for the creators. Historically they have had around 5% to 10% royalties on the sale price of the NFT. If the % of royalties is reduced drastically, this can jeopardize the viability of many projects with a low volume of transactions.
The OpenSea move came just after the marketplace released the BLUR token to more than 100,000 users. This new marketplace brings new policies where buyers and sellers have higher revenues than in OpenSea.
Late last year, OpenSea made several changes to its creator royalty approach. In addition, it eventually said it would honor the royalty setting on all NFT projects created before a specific date. All these movements (most likely motivated by the growing competition in the sector) have had effects that OpenSea was not looking for.
But OpenSea isn’t going down without a fight. It’s now asking users to stay tuned for its loyalty programs.
In addition, speculations have it that OpenSea is looking to launch its token this year.
The BLUR token has a promising future and will likely continue gaining market share in the NFT space. However, the platform may face hurdles in the future, such as increased competition from other NFT marketplaces.
Nonetheless, the team has made strategic partnerships and collaborations to enhance the platform’s offerings and attract more users.
BLUR has disrupted the NFT ecosystem. Its loyalty program and airdrop program have attracted many users from the competition.
At 82%, it currently has the lion’s share of the market. Yet, it is launching another airdrop campaign after its $300m airdrop. However, it is crucial to consider that OpenSea and other competitors won’t give up without a fight. As Opensea says, it’s coming with its loyalty program.
Overall, BLUR’s emergence is indicative of the evolving NFT ecosystem. It will be interesting to see how it develops in the coming months and years.
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