Blur.io, a new upstart NFT marketplace, has recently overtaken OpenSea as the leading marketplace for both creators and traders.
In the past 30 days, Blur has recorded $1.04 billion in sales volume compared to OpenSea’s $480 million, according to DappRadar.
Blur’s Recent Rise to Popularity
Blur’s rise in popularity can be attributed to many things. These things include the company’s unique reward system.
During its first launch, Blur gave loyal users “care packages.” They promised to reward them in the future with their own cryptocurrency called BLUR.
You can claim your Care Packages from Airdrop 2 by placing a single bid for any amount on any collection. Once you've claimed you can reveal your packages immediately. Traders who maintained full loyalty have 2x odds for Rares and Legendaries and 3x odds for Mythicals!
— Blur (@blur_io) December 6, 2022
The company has also given away a lot of BLUR tokens for free in three waves to get professional traders, which are its target market, to switch from other marketplaces to its own.
For season 2, Blur plans to give out another 300 million tokens and add “loyalty scores” to encourage creators to only list their NFTs on Blur to get more rewards.
300M+ BLUR will be distributed to the community in Season 2.
What’s the secret to maximizing rewards? Loyalty.
Users with 100% loyalty have the highest chances of Mythical Care Packages, which are worth 100x Uncommon Care Packages.
Here are 3 ways to maximize your loyalty👇 pic.twitter.com/Cgiemrvpxh
— Blur (@blur_io) February 21, 2023
Blur’s Advantage Over OpenSea
One big advantage of Blur over OpenSea is that they charge less. They don’t have a trading fee and only enforce a 0.5% minimum creator royalty.
On the other hand, OpenSea has a 2.5% fee and a royalty enforcement tool. The tool is placed to ensure creators are paid the royalties they choose and can block marketplaces that have optional royalties.
OpenSea’s tool was affecting Blur directly since they only have optional royalties. It stayed that way until late last month, when Blur finally came up with a solution.
Blur adopted the filter registry last month, but the current OS policy makes creators choose between earning revenue on OS or Blur, but not both. This policy is not always enforced. Pirate Nation has been earning royalties on both platforms and has earned more from Blur than OS. https://t.co/C2v9ZiEjiS pic.twitter.com/4zaQPjTEX0
— Blur (@blur_io) December 7, 2022
Last month, Blur went after the royalty enforcement tool and OpenSea directly by saying it would enforce full creator royalties as long as creators blocked trading of their collections on OpenSea.
In response, OpenSea dropped its trading fee to 0% for a limited time, moved to a minimum 0.5% optional royalty fee, and scrapped its royalty enforcement tool.
The Future of Blur and OpenSea
Despite Blur’s recent dominance, some have claimed that their tokenomics aren’t innovative. Some believe that it could be bad for the NFT ecosystem as a whole. They believe that making NFTs more about profit than art is not a great idea for the industry.
However, Blur’s spokesperson said that the company has a “long-term view” and believes that “the art world and blockchain technology can help create a world with more transparency, trust, and a better system of incentives for creators.”
1. I’m going to be 100% real here. @blur_io is bad for NFTs and CryptoArt. There have been jokes that NFTs are just “shitcoins with pictures” and blur has essentially turned them into that by creating a GUI that minimizes the actual art for NFTs into nothing. pic.twitter.com/7vAs7osOcM
— exlawyer.eth/tez (@exlawyernft) February 24, 2023
Pedro Herrera, head of research at DappRadar, said that while Blur has given 51% of its token supply to its community, the allocations are skewed towards Ethereum NFT whales.
However, Blur’s spokesperson said that there were also smaller individuals who received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the airdrop.
The competition between Blur and OpenSea shows that a new era may be arising in the world of NFTs. It remains to be seen how OpenSea will continue to respond to the threat.
What do you think about this update? 🤔
