Blur has managed to capture a large portion of OpenSea’s market share. But will it last?
Emerging NFT marketplace Blur may have been locked in a public battle with its one-time market leader, but the latter appears to be making a comeback, albeit slowly.
According to Dune Analytics data compiled by sealaunch.xyz, the percentage of unique users on OpenSea has risen since the mid-February crash.
At the same time, it was found that the average sales size of each user on Blur dropped significantly after the airdrop. Since the event, the trading volume of major collections such as CryptoPunks, BAYC, Otherdeed, MAYC, Meebits, Moonbirds, CloneX, and Doodles has decreased on Blur, but increased on OpenSea.
The governance token BLUR was airdropped to users last week, and the tokens have even accumulated over $1 billion in trading volume.
Blur and OpenSea
As part of its power grab strategy, Blur updated its royalty policy, which states that NFT creators cannot earn royalties on both Blur and OpenSea at the same time. During its November launch, Blur did not collect full royalties - it did not force creators to charge fees on secondary sales of their digital collectibles. Instead, it was up to buyers to choose whether to respect the artist's royalty policy. However, this was later expanded to a minimum fee of 0.5% of royalties.
OpenSea reportedly needed the new collection to stop Blur from charging mandatory royalties. The latter then tried to circumvent the blacklist by developing a new marketplace on OpenSea’s Seaport protocol. The goal was to allow creators to receive full royalties on both platforms.
Last November, OpenSea unveiled its series seeking to enforce royalties that would have to discourage marketplaces that don’t fully respect them.
NFT sales surged in February, reaching their highest level since the Terra implosion. Blur primarily contributed to the surge. Its trading volume surpassed OpenSea.
Market manipulation allegations
Blur’s trading volume surged to over $1 billion in February. Although the numbers have since declined, the volume was reportedly generated by a small number of whales flipping NFTs back and forth to accumulate BLUR tokens through the company’s incentive program.
Cryptoslam, a leading platform that tracks NFT sales, said it would remove $577 million worth of Blur transactions from its data, citing “market manipulation.”
It further revealed that 80.5% of Blur’s sales have been wash trades since February 14. Conversely, only 2.6% of OpenSea’s sales during the same period were wash trades.
