The NFT platform Blur has been gaining tremendous success in the recent period. Through various strategies, the marketplace is gaining ever more users, increasing competition with the industry top OpenSea.

What is the NFT marketplace Blur?

Blur is a digital platform that allows users to buy, sell and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with ease.

The marketplace has quickly become a popular destination for collectors and artists seeking to monetize their works, as well as for merchants looking to profit from the rapidly growing NFT market.

Founded in 2020 by a team of experienced developers and entrepreneurs with a passion for blockchain technology and digital art.

The platform is designed to be easy to use and accessible to everyone, regardless of technical skills or experience with NFTs. Users can browse and purchase NFTs from different categories, including art, music, games, and sports.

Blur differs from other NFT platforms in its focus on community and collaboration.

The platform has a vibrant social network where users can connect with each other, share their collections, and discover new NFTs.

Blur also offers a range of tools and resources to help artists and creators market their work and build their brand, including customizable showcases, analytics dashboards, and promotional tools.

Blur’s popularity makes the platform vulnerable to hackers

While Blur has quickly gained a reputation as an easy-to-use and accessible NFT platform, it has also become a target for hackers and cybercriminals.

In February 2023, Blur suffered a major security breach that resulted in the theft of more than $200 million worth of NFT from its users.

The attack was orchestrated by a group of hackers who were able to exploit a vulnerability in Blur’s smart contracts, the digital protocols that govern the behavior of the platform’s NFT transactions.

These hackers were able to transfer the stolen NFTs to their own accounts on the blockchain, effectively taking them away from their rightful owners.

The platform team reacted quickly to the attack, working with blockchain security experts and law enforcement to track and recover the stolen NFTs.

While some NFTs were returned to their owners, many others were lost or sold on other NFT platforms.

The security breach was a wake-up call for Blur and the entire NFT industry, highlighting the need for better security measures and more robust risk management practices.

Since the attack, Blur has implemented a number of new security protocols, including multi-factor authentication, threat monitoring, and enhanced smart contract auditing.

Competition to OpenSea

Despite the security breach, Blur has continued to gain popularity and market share in the competitive NFT world.

In fact, some analysts have predicted that Blur could become a serious challenger to OpenSea, which is currently the largest NFT platform in terms of trading volume and user base.

One reason for Blur’s success is its focus on liquidity and trading. The platform offers a number of tools and features that make it easy for traders to buy and sell NFTs quickly and efficiently.

These include instant transactions, low fees, and a variety of order types and trading strategies. Blur also has a large and active community of traders, who share tips, strategies, and insights on the platform’s social network.

It has also managed to attract high-profile artists and creators to its platform. Many of these artists have chosen to launch exclusive NFT collections on Blur, which has helped boost the platform’s profile and attract new users.

In addition, Blur’s focus on community and collaboration has helped build a loyal user base. The platform has a number of features that encourage user interaction and engagement, such as chat rooms, forums, and social media integrations.

Blur also offers a number of tools and resources to help artists and creators market their work and build their brand, including customizable showcases, analytics dashboards, and promotional tools.

Some investors are beginning to shift their focus from OpenSea to Blur, seeing it as a more innovative and dynamic platform.

The challenges Blur faces in the NFT world

Nonetheless, Blur still faces a number of challenges in establishing itself as a major player in the NFT market.

One of the biggest challenges is maintaining the security and integrity of the platform. The security breach that occurred in February 2023 highlighted the risks and vulnerabilities that NFT platforms face, and Blur will need to continue to invest in security and risk management to protect its users and reputation.

Another challenge for the NFT platform is attracting and retaining high-quality artists and creators. Even though it has been successful in attracting some high-profile names to its platform, it will need to continue to invest in marketing and promotion to build its brand and attract new users.

Blur will also need to differentiate itself from other NFT platforms by offering unique features and benefits that are not available elsewhere.

Despite these challenges, the rise of Blur is a testament to the growing popularity and potential of the NFT market. As more investors, artists, and traders enter the market, platforms like Blur will continue to play a key role in facilitating the buying and selling of NFTs.

Whether it will be able to dethrone OpenSea as the dominant player in the market remains to be seen, but it is clear that Blur has already made a significant impact and is well positioned for future growth and success.

Ethereum validators are benefiting from the increasingly fierce competition between the two largest NFT marketplaces, OpenSea and Blur, which is driving up gas rates.

However, the windfall may not last long. Below are the details.

Competition in the NFT marketplace between OpenSea and Blur

Ethereum’s validator nodes, no longer miners after the “Merge” in September, are benefiting from the intense competition between non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces Blur and OpenSea, which has increased transaction fees, aka gas, on the network.

Ethereum’s gas fees, which typically rise when there is increased demand for network blockspace, have increased since the beginning of the year, with recent spikes driven primarily by the NFT market, according to data from on-chain data firm Glassnode.

In fact, Ethereum validators earn rewards through gas rates by staking their Ether to protect the network. As a result, average transaction gas prices were 35 Gwei (a denomination of ETH) on Monday and exceeded 38 Gwei on 16 February.

In other words, Glassnode data showed the highest value since June 2022. Yehudah Petscher, Cryptoslam NFT relationship strategist at Forkast Labs, said the following on the matter:

“Miners are the clear winners right now, as they are processing this massive surge in Ethereum transactions. You remember this every time you make a transaction, whether it’s sending some ETH between wallets or buying an NFT. That little warning pops up in the MetaMask and tells you the network is busy and you can’t help but think how well the miners are doing.”

Why did competition arise between the OpenSea and Blur NFT marketplaces?

The Blur NFT marketplace, launched in October, has gained traction because it does not charge transaction fees for users and recommends a low royalty rate for NFT creators.

The moves were seen as a clear challenge to NFT marketplace leader OpenSea, which responded by cutting its fees for popular NFT collections to zero while losing ground to Blur.

Glassnode analyst Alice Kohn wrote in a report last week that the market’s recent focus on Blur has led to increased demand for blockspace, resulting in higher fees for validators.

In the past seven days, the Blur NFT market has recorded a trading volume of $410.93 million, more than seven times higher than OpenSea’s $52.4 million, according to data from DappRadar.

Elsa Kong, head of research at Singapore-based NFT data company NFTGo, told Forkast that the high gas fees caused by the airdrop of the Blur token can be seen as beneficial for Ethereum validators in the short term.

Although, it would probably not bring any major changes in the long run.

Kong said it is not entirely fair to call Ethereum miners the “winners” in this situation, as the success of the Ethereum network depends on a variety of factors, including user adoption, network security and developer activity.

In fact, Kong stated:

“It is important to note that the Blur token airdrop is not directly related to Ethereum miners, as miners are more concerned with upgrading Ethereum such as going from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.”

Nick Ruck’s comment on the NFT conflict

Nick Ruck, chief strategy officer of intellectual property licensing firm NFT ContentFi, said smaller stakers may not see a big difference in their earnings.

He added, further, that he has been an active Ether staker since November:

“Of course, the higher gas rates aren’t great for everyday users, but you still get more commissions for stakers. Personally, the higher gas fees from my day trading aren’t offset by the increased fees I earn, but I’m also not betting much compared to a larger staking-as-a-service firm.”

In other words, in Ruck’s view, for most people who stake in pools, they might not see a big difference since they are sharing in portions.

Ruck said there is a lot of maintenance that goes into validation. Hence, the more industrialized the configuration, the more will be gained simply through increased efficiency. If you do it at home, you will be penalized for going offline, for example.

Ruck agreed that validators will not be long-term beneficiaries of Blur and OpenSea’s struggle for dominance, simply because he thinks it will be short-lived. Finally, Ruck concluded:

“For now, they can earn more, but I think it’s too temporary. How long can Blur and OpenSea go without earning those commissions or earning only minimally compared to before?”

Glassnode’s Kohn wrote that the recent buzz surrounding Blur has not yet had an appreciable impact on network adoption.

Kohn said that Blur and OpenSea may be fighting over the same pre-existing user base, as the latest interest in NFTs seems to attract mainly existing users and are not yet able to attract new users to the Ethereum network.

OpenSea and Blur rivalry: the rise of NFT sales

Global sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) increased 159% in the seven days from 17 to 23 February, with the increase in rewards from the NFT Blur market appearing to continue to drive most of the action across the industry.

Total weekly NFT sales increased to $772 million over the seven days from $299 million the previous week, according to data from NFT aggregation site CryptoSlam.

The average price of assets sold Tuesday rose to $566.43, more than three times higher than the $175.57 on 14 Feb. Yehudah Petscher, NFT relationship strategist at Cryptoslam, said:

“Blur Rewards are still driving most of the action in the NFT space as Blur farming season 2 is now open.”

On 14 February, Blur released and distributed its Blur tokens. On Wednesday, it will distribute another 300 million BLUR tokens. The cryptocurrency was trading at $0.94 as of 3 PM. Friday in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data.

In addition, in the past seven days, the NFT Blur marketplace has recorded a trading volume of $652.28 million, more than four times the $150.66 million of market leader OpenSea, according to data from DappRadar.

The co-founder of the NFT marketplace of the moment, Blur, revealed himself to the community of crypto-lovers on Twitter under the name Pacman. In reality, the 24-year-old young man’s name is Tieshun Roquerre and he recounted that he dropped out of both high school and MIT.

Blur: co-founder reveals his identity to crypto Twitter

In a roundup of tweets, viewed at the time of writing by as many as 1.1 million users, Tieshun Roquerre, aka “Pacman,” reveals that he is the co-founder of the NFT marketplace of the moment, Blur.

When we started working on Blur 401 days ago, I had a conversation with @_anishagnihotri on whether to doxx or build pseudonymously. I was 50/50 on both choices, but Anish pointed out that being pseudo gave me optionality to doxx later on. It’s hard to say no to free options!

— Pacman | Blur.io (@PacmanBlur) February 22, 2023

The 24-year-old recounts how he initially chose to build the Blur platform anonymously, enjoying the privacy of a pseudonym. But at current growth levels that have surpassed industry leader OpenSea, the young man decided to reveal his identity.

In his first Twitter description, Pacman recounts his young career in four points as follows:

• Dropped out of high school to go through Y Combinator at 17
• Studied Math with Computer Science at MIT
• Received the Thiel Fellowship to leave MIT and start Namebase
• Sold Namebase to Namecheap

Blur: co-founder chooses to keep up with his Pacman avatar identity

In his tweets, the co-founder of Blur then specified that he wants to continue to be recognized as his avatar version “Pacman.”

Roquerre is reportedly a 24-year-old who worked as a software engineer at the e-commerce site Teespring and then dropped out of high school. He then co-founded StrongIntro and pursued it through the startup accelerator Y Combinator.

The young man then spent a two-year stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before dropping out of school to found the crypto domain startup Namebase, for which he raised $5 million and then sold to Namecheap within three years.

Blur was launched last October with plans to launch the BLUR token in early 2023 for NFT traders.

The immediate boom of the BLUR token

BLUR, the token of Blur, was launched on the Huobi crypto-exchange exactly on 14 February with the BLU/USDT exchange pair.

The initial price of BLUR was $0.01, but on that same day BLUR reached a price of $9.90, which would be to date its all-time high (or ATH – All Time High).

Obviously this was a debut price pump of almost +10,000% in a few hours, which soon after ended up settling around $1, the current price at the time of writing.

And indeed, BLUR’s price from its debut to date has ranged from lows of $0.60 to highs of $1.3.

In addition to Huobi, it is already possible to trade BLUR on other crypto-exchanges such as OKX, Deepcoin, BTCEX, ByBit, and Bitget.

Latest news: OpenSea implements 0% fees to regain the NFT user base lost to Blur NFT.

Apparently, NFT marketplace Blur has overtaken OpenSea in terms of daily trading volume in ETH.

This is because users, eager to get higher returns from their NFT investments, are looking for a trading platform that works in their favor. In addition, OpenSea has also temporarily dropped the 2.5% fee.

OpenSea and Blur NFT: here’s what’s happening

OpenSea, the leading marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has announced a massive restructuring that will reduce the platform’s fees and increase earnings for creators as competing marketplaces continue to syphon off its user base.

According to data provided by Nansen, on 18 February, NFT marketplace Blur surpassed OpenSea in daily trading volume in Ether as users, eager for higher returns on their NFT investments, are looking for a trading platform that works in their favor.

In response, OpenSea has announced three major changes to win back its customers. The moves include a 0% fee for a limited time, the introduction of optional gains for creators, and leniency toward other traders.

“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.”

In addition, OpenSea admitted to losing users to other NFT marketplaces that do not fully enforce royalties for creators.

Hence, the new measures are aimed at reviving its dominance in the space, as stated:

“Recent events – including Blur’s decision to cut creator earnings (even on filtered collections) and the false choice they are forcing them to make between cash on Blur or OpenSea – show that our efforts aren’t working.”

OpenSea believes it has protected creators’ earnings on all collections while reiterating its support for the Operator Filter, a feature designed to help creators secure revenue for resale of their works. However, this filter proactively blocked proposals from marketplaces that adopted the same policies.

The difference between Blur and OpenSea’s royalties on NFTs

Blur’s leadership in terms of daily trading volume can be attributed to its new royalty policy, which shows the differences in royalty payment options between its platform and OpenSea.

In fact, it reads:

“Recent events – including Blur’s decision to cut creator earnings (even on filtered collections) and the false choice they are forcing them to make between cash on Blur or OpenSea – show that our efforts aren’t working.”

Amidst the royalty war between the two marketplaces, community members stressed the importance of competition in the industry. If there were no zero-royalty marketplaces, major players like OpenSea would end up raising fees, hurting creators and collectors.

OpenSea plans to continue testing its model and identify what works best for the community and the organization. Community members speculate that OpenSea will increase platform fees in the future if it can recover lost customers, a predatory move often seen in industries with less competition.

Regardless, the appointment of YouTube’s new CEO, Neal Mohan, has been received as a victory for the cryptocurrency community, considering Mohan’s inclination to use NFTs and Web3 as revenue sources for creators. In fact, Mohan stated:

“Thanks, Susan Wojcicki. It’s been great working with you over the years. You’ve turned YouTube into an amazing home for creators and viewers. I am excited to continue this amazing and important mission. Can’t wait to find out what awaits us.”

Finally, while serving as YouTube’s chief product officer, in February 2022 Mohan unveiled tentative plans to integrate features such as metaverse-based content experiences and content tokenization via NFTs.

The removal of the 2.5% commission to NFT sales

The popular marketplace OpenSea has chosen to temporarily remove the 2.5% fee applied to the sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This move is particularly necessary to combat the platform’s growing number of competitors such as Blur, which has just completed airdropping its token.

It is worth noting, however, that OpenSea can charge up to 0.5% fees if the creator’s income is set between 0 and 0.5%, so as to discourage inorganic trading volume.

In addition, there will be another exception for collections that do not apply creator income from an on-chain method, in which case a minimum 0.5% commission will be applied to be returned to said creators.

As stated:

“When selling an NFT using OpenSea, if the collection does not use an on-chain enforcement method, the minimum creator revenue will be 0.5%. Sellers also have the ability to add additional creator income to any transaction.”

In fact, to automatically receive their royalties by reselling NFTs on the secondary market, a creator must define it directly in their collection settings. Platforms such as OpenSea allow this.

However, while such solutions allow OpenSea to automatically return royalties to creators, the market has seen the emergence of platforms that have not always taken this fully into account.