A new NFT market has again raised the waves in the crypto market. On February 5, according to the data of Dune Analytics, the turnover on Blur in the past three months exceeded $200 million, far outnumbering that of similar NFT aggregators. Gem ($38.18 million) and Reservoir ($19.9 million) ranked second and third in the three-month trading volume list.

 Since launched in March 2022, Blur has attracted tremendous fans shortly by referral waiting lists; Blur has drawn a large number of users' attention in just two weeks after its public release. It has surpassed Gem in three days since its launch, becoming the NFT aggregator with the highest sales; the two airdrops announced by Blur were the main reasons behind the growth at that time. At the beginning of the third round of airdrops, Blur even led to a rapid increase in the trading volume and the floor price of BAYC, Azuki and other blue-chip NFTs. At the same time, as the twin blow of insufficient market funds, free mint and zero royalty have troubled the sustainable development of the project, players are accustomed to fast come in and fast come out: an excellent aggregator is urgently needed by players active in the market at this stage. Blur is the right choice for professional traders, which exactly meets the needs of the current market.

If you buy in directly on the NFT trading market as before, the difference in the base price between different markets and the slow operational response will lead to the inability to quickly obtain the right price chips, only resulting in missing or lost. In OpenSea or other NFT trading markets, when the home page recommends different new items every day, users look for their favorite pictures, and then slowly wait for the deal, just like walking around the real fair; in Blur, however, there is only the trading data dashboard of hot items on the home page, and it only encourages fast-paced trading, as if in the exchange.

Blur

Blur is an NFT market and aggregator equipped with many innovative functions designed for professional traders. It is defined as "a combination of real-time NFT market and aggregator", which supports NFT batch trading and charges no royalty fee (Opensea charges 5% of the fee). The Blur platform aggregates NFT series from leading trading markets such as OpenSea, LooksRay and X2Y2, and also allows users to place their NFT assets on Blur. Unlike many other NFT markets that charge commissions, Blur maintains a 0% NFT trading rate.

Team’s Background 

In March 2022, Blur announced that it had raised more than $14 million. Led by Paradigm, investors included institutional and angel investors such as Keyboard Monkey, Ledger Status, 0xMaki, Santiago Santos, Zeneca, Deeze, etc. Blur's team is composed of developers from well-known institutions such as MIT, Citadel, Five Rings Capital, Twitch, Brex, Square and Y Combinator.

What’s Behind the Hottest Blur

Operation and interface for veteran crypto users

As the user opens Blur.io and clicks the link to the wallet, the system will prompt users to connect it to their Web3 wallets (currently supporting MetaMask, WalletConnect, and Coinbase wallets). After the link is connected, users can start to discover various NFTs on the website.

By default, the collection will be listed in the order of daily trading volume, and some key data (such as floor price, number of holders, and various price and quantity indicators) will be displayed. Users can also view all Ethereum-based NFTs in the wallet through the portfolio tab of Blur, and then easily track the listed NFTs and their rarity, estimated collection value, and life cycle income statement.

The Blur interface is customizable. When browsing NFT collections, users can switch between multiple views (such as lists and tiles) according to their preferences. Unlike OpenSea, where users need to switch tabs to view sales history or other analyses, Blur can display all content on a single page, making it easier to access and compare all relevant NFT collection data.

As described above, OpenSea is like a fair, which is friendly to inexperienced novices; Blur is an exchange, which is more targeted at advanced crypto users. In general, Blur is a useful aggregator.

Provide efficient and convenient functions for traders

The Blur platform runs ten times faster than other NFT aggregators, displays the pending transactions on the NFT in less than one second, and updates the list every four seconds. The fast display of pending transactions, together with the nearly real-time metadata update on the collection art display, constitutes a huge advantage for users who want to fast come in and out. In addition, Blur's gas priority preset can help traders to outperform the competitors who purchase NFT through other exchanges or aggregators. Most importantly, the contract in Blur is more optimized than that in other markets, saving up to 17% on gas fees.

Another popular feature of Blur is that it can clearly show the rarity of different NFTs and the floor price under specific attributes. On the Blur platform, it is not through the series list and sales history to evaluate the NFT that is higher than the floor price but to find the lowest price NFT list according to the individual characteristics. This function can not only help users accurately evaluate their assets, but also benefit those NFT buyers who hunt for bargains. Blur also provides tools for those users. All NFT series have a floor price analysis chart, which can show how many NFTs are listed above different floor prices so that users who hunt for bargains can intuitively understand how the NFT they buy will affect the market.

As the platform most specialized in NFT trading, Blur has indeed leading advantages over its kinds on the market. However, Blur only supports Ethereum, but its team plans to include more public chains.

Blur's custom royalties and zero fees

Royalty has always been a sensitive topic in the NFT trading market. "Traders want to maximize profits, collectors want to support creators, and creators want to get more royalties". Because royalties cannot be enforced on multiple markets, different platforms set different royalties. When traders put their items on the Blur, they can customize these royalties.

The zero royalty and custom royalty on SudoSwap and X2Y2 have been hugely discussed in the market before. The market believes that custom or zero royalty will cause the project providers to lose part of their capital for sustainable development. Therefore, Blur expects to encourage prospective traders to use royalty through airdrop incentives. In the second round of airdrops, the higher the user set royalty on Blur, the higher the loyalty will be obtained and more airdrops will be obtained. But in fact, this expectation did not actually prevent the low or even zero royalty. The overall average version tax on Blur is still very low and even led to the decline of the overall royalty on the NFT market.

Blur does not charge users the same fees as OpenSea, LooksRay and X2Y2. Traders use Blur aggregator, trading market and other functions at no cost. Under the premise that royalty is customized, traders can directly obtain full income, but now, zero fees should be used as a short-term strategy to attract new users.

However, due to Blur's custom royalties, the blacklist dispute between Blur and OpenSea has also been triggered.

Blacklist dispute between Blur and OpenSea

Blur uses Seaport to bypass OpenSea's blacklist (photo source: Pandajackson42)

In November 2022, OpenSea implemented a new policy: NFT projects seeking compulsory royalties must blackmail those markets that do not fully respect them. Since Blur did not have compulsory royalties at that time, it was blacklisted, which resulted in NFT collections with compulsory royalties on OpenSea could not be traded on Blur. Later, Blur tried to communicate with OpenSea to remove himself from the blacklist but was rejected.

On February 1, Blur created a new NFT trading system by using OpenSea's Seaport to bypass OpenSea's blacklist control. Because Seaport is not on the OpenSea blacklist, the NFT projects that blackmail Blur can now trade through the new system and enforce royalties.

At present, Blur has two systems that can execute transactions in its market. The old system continues to deal with the NFT projects that did not blackmail it, while the new system is responsible for the NFT projects that blackmail it before. Because Blur automatically selects the system, it brings users a smooth experience.

In terms of general rationality, zero royalty makes it more difficult for small and medium-sized creators/project owners. But it is not so much Blur's mistake as Blur's compliance with the market. The severe hardship in the crypto market in 2022 has not yet completely receded. Active users are mainly traders, and it is the current market represented by these traders that made the Blur possible.

Conclusion

It is good for Blur to use aggregators as traffic importers in the market, but it still faces serious challenges. Gem under OpenSea will strive to narrow the gap in user experience and win back the top deal in the aggregator field. As OpenSea launches the data dashboard in Collection Offer and Beta, it can be seen that OpenSea has also sensed the changes in user demand in the current market, and there is the possibility of integrating Gem more seamlessly into the market. Blur needs to continue to maintain its core unique advantage, but zero royalty and zero commission really fit the current market, and it is unclear how DNA will be in the future.

In addition, professional users may feel that Blur's experience is good, but novices may think that the functions provided by Blur may not compare against compared the easy-to-use functions provided by OpenSea and other markets. With the popularity of crypto and NFT applications, Blur may also expand its user base; but if it wants to surpass OpenSea, Blur needs to take into consideration both professional users and novices to make its platform more accessible and friendly to a wider range of users.