Over the past 30 days, buzzworthy NFT marketplace Blur has handled over US$816mln in Ethereum-based NFT trades, significantly overshadowing OpenSea’s US$430mln, according to DappRadar.
The up-start NFT marketplace has had rival OpenSea in its sights since October 2022, when Blur announced a zero-fee trading model.
But the issue of royalties is proving to be the bigger battle for the NFT marketplaces.
Blur does not enforce buyers to pay royalties prescribed by the creator, instead implementing an optional model at a 0.5% minimum.
OpenSea, which typically enforces full royalties, has disincentivised creators from listing on Blur by preventing collections from being able to earn royalties if they are listed on both.
It does so by allowing creators to adjust their NFT smart contract codes to restrict sales on any marketplace that doesn’t enforce full royalties.
In response, Blur is encouraging all creators to shun OpenSea for its own platform.
“Today, OpenSea automatically sets royalties to optional when they detect trading on Blur. We would like to welcome OpenSea to stop this policy so that new collections can earn royalties everywhere,” Blur said in a February 15 blog post.
Blur’s strategy appears to have worked, if the numbers above are anything to go by.
Plus, OpenSea last week scrapped its enforcement policy and also set trading fees to 0% for a limited time.
We’re making some big changes today:
1) OpenSea fee → 0% for a limited time
2) Moving to optional creator earnings (0.5% min) for all collections without on-chain enforcement (old & new)
3) Marketplaces with the same policies will not be blocked by the operator filter
— OpenSea (@opensea) February 17, 2023
The debate over royalties is an important one for the NFT industry.
One of the fundamental principles behind the NFT movement is for creators to exert agency over their collections on the secondary marketplace.
Any threat to this principle is sure to drum up controversy.
Another popular NFT marketplace called X2Y2 recently caused a stink among NFT creators after allowing buyers to opt out of paying royalties on the secondary market altogether.
Blur NFTs: A quick background
Blur is an NFT marketplace for “pro traders” (their words, not mine) backed by Web3 venture fund Paradigm.
All popular NFT collections, including Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, Pudgy Penguins and Doodle, are traded on the platform.
Blur has been live since July 2022, but largely went under the radar until interest picked up in the past could of months.
When BLUR token dropped on February 14, active users surged to an all-time high of 57,000, individual transactions exceeded 77,000 and daily transaction volumes clocked in at more than US$87mln.
In the week following, daily transaction volumes hit the US$100mln mark.
Blur’s trading activity skyrocketed on when BLUR token airdropped on February 14 – Source: DappRadar
BLUR token has not fared well since launching on Valentine’s Day at US$5. At the time of writing the token had fallen nearly 80% to slightly over a dollar.
But it is early days, and Blur has shown the nous to take on industry champ OpenSea.
The winner may not be clear as day, but Blur has certainly made a mark.