- Blur’s weekly Ethereum trading volume has surpassed that of OpenSea by over $190 million
- Blur’s volume reached $519 million against OpenSea’s $322 million
- This comes a few days after a fallout between the two NFT marketplaces
The Ethereum NFT trading volume on Blur has surpassed that of OpenSea after increasing by over $190 million within the last seven days, less than a week after it advised NFT artists to block OpenSea. According to DappRadar, Blur’s 7-day trading volume reached $519 million while OpenSea only managed $322 million within the same time frame. Blur has also registered a 143% spike in the number of traders while OpenSea has an 8% drop.
Just Whales Flipping NFTs?
Despite a surge in the number of traders, the rise in trading volume seems to come from a section of traders with a huge NFT holding, and who may be looking to increase their share of Blur tokens during the next distribution cycle.
we aren’t growing the pie. It’s the same folks circulating assets + eth around and around
— Naveen 🦅 (🖖🏾,🖖🏾) (@NaveenSpark) February 18, 2023
For instance, the leading NFT on Blur is Otherside with most of the trades involving the NFT coming from one seller. Apart from Blur traders flipping collectibles for more rewards in the future, the marketplace also encourages bulk NFT trading by pushing for the use of bidding pools.
Blur Bidding Pools have reached a new ATH of $132.65M TVL, or, around 2.4x Aptos TVL and 0.5x Solana TVL.
Blur also became the #1 protocol on Ethereum by gas usage as well, surpassing both Uniswap and Seaport.
🚨TURN NOTIFICATIONS ON🚨 for details about Season 2, coming soon! https://t.co/89DONJ6K8z pic.twitter.com/GCqGHDQBcq
— Blur (@blur_io) February 20, 2023
According to Blur, the bidding pools recently attained a new all-time high (ATH) of over $130 million in total value locked (TVL). To put up with the ongoing competition, OpenSea announced drastic measures such as slashing its 2.5% platform fee and softening its stand on some aspects of how it enforces royalties.
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
OpenSea Still Leads the Way
With Blur’s lead revolving around its recent and upcoming token airdrop, it may have a hard time removing OpenSea from the top seat, once the need to flip NFTs for token rewards subsides. According to Dune Analytics, OpenSea has added over 40,000 more unique wallets in one week compared to Blur suggesting that NFT traders and creators still prefer using OpenSea over Blur.
Although Blur’s efforts to take the lead are seemingly bearing fruits, it’s yet to be seen how far the marketplace will go to neutralize OpenSea’s command.
