Blur - Next Generation NFT Terminal

Level-up your NFT trading experience.

Jul 18, 2023

The tech industry has always been the domain of companies who capitalized on their ‘first-mover advantage’. Instead of proverbially ‘exploding into the scene’, brands like Apple, Amazon, eBay and Uber created the scene themselves and never left. Web3 is no different with the likes of Ethereum who made the scene for dApps and OpenSea for NFTs.

So when a latecomer like Blur suddenly snatches the spotlight from OpenSea, it's hard not to pay attention. Especially when people have been claiming the NFT bubble to have burst for some time already. Yet sales on Blur soared last February–at one time seeing a 361% increase, worth $460 million–within a week, making OpenSea’s $12 million sales for the same period look a bit amateurish.

So how did Blur manage all this so late in the game?

What is Blur?

Blur is an NFT marketplace on Ethereum which launched only in October of 2022, after only less than a year in private development. Blur’s main selling point is that it was designed primarily for professional NFT traders and provides a plethora of advanced tools and sophisticated services.

Most prominent among these are Blur’s aggregator capabilities, allowing users to browse NFT listings even in other NFT marketplaces; as well as powerful bulk-buying options for really serious collectors and NFT whales. Additionally, there are currently zero transaction fees for trading on Blur.

Blur services and capabilities

Aggregator - Blur allows users to browse and analyze collections not only on its site, but on multiple platforms at the same time to compare prices and detail characteristics. What’s more, you can make purchases from other platforms even through Blur.
Bulk buying - Traders can buy multiple NFTs in a single transaction, securing purchases quicker and saving on gas fees.
Floor sweeping - in NFT trading, means buying a huge number or all of the items at the lowest asking price.
Snipe reveals - gives users the abilities to spot rare items across different marketplaces faster.
Portfolio analytics tool - track users’ sales efficiently and get updated portfolio valuations based on real time data.

The Blur marketplace designed for the professional NFT trader.

The Blur blitzkrieg

Blur not only went head-to-head with OpenSea, but went straight for the jugular with a well-executed ‘vampire attack’. Aside from charging zero transaction fees, they also implemented a unique royalty system that runs completely counter to OpenSea’s.

In NFT marketplaces, creators profit not only from directly selling their NFTs, but also from royalty fees from succeeding sales. Being the pioneer marketplace, OpenSea made royalty fees mandatory to attract creators to launch their collections on its platform. However, OpenSea also made it so that creators can’t collect royalties from sales on any other platform at the same time. Listing your collection on any other platform would automatically set your royalties to “optional” on OpenSea.

This didn’t sit right with Blur, whose stand is that creators should be able to collect royalties on all marketplaces that they whitelist–and not be forced to just pick between selling on OpenSea or on other smaller marketplaces that couldn’t stand up to OpenSea’s popularity. In a bold statement, Blur decided to enforce full royalties on collections that block OpenSea.

And as the numbers prove, Blur won the hearts of NFT creators in ‘one fell swoop’. Not to mention the series of aggressive airdrop campaigns that have raised massive revenues.

The BLUR token

Blur has its own native cryptocurrency with the ticker BLUR, which users earn by trading on the platform or by providing liquidity. BLUR also functions as a governance token for the Blur DAO which gives holders voting rights on the protocol’s future directions such as determining the fee rate, as well as the protocol’s value accrual and distribution.

The first BLUR airdrop was completed last February to much anticipation, marking the end of the first round which released 360 million tokens, or about 12% of the total supply. Blur took a gamified approach by issuing “care packages” which were based on users’ activities on the platform, with some users reporting to have received as much as $3 million worth of tokens.

Blur’s second airdrop was issued in April. To maximize earnings for this airdrop, users’ were encouraged to engage with the platform by buying, selling, and listing NFTs.

Tokenomics

BLUR has a total supply of 3 billion, all of which were minted during genesis, but which will be made available over the course of four to five years. The allocation during this period will be as follows:

51% to Blur community members (1.53 billion BLUR)

29% vested over four years to core contributors (867.60 million BLUR)

19% vested over four years to investors (563.63 million BLUR)

1% vested four to five years to advisors (36.76 million BLUR)

Founding team and backers

Blur was co-founded pseudonymously by “Pacman” who only revealed himself in the wake of Blur’s success as Tieshun Roquerre who attended MIT but dropped out to found crypto domain startup, Namebase. Other team members include developers and creators who have worked previously with Citadel, Five Rings Capital, Twitch, Brex, Square, and Y Combinator.

Blur raised 11$ million from initial investments from Paradigm, 6529, Cozomo Medici, dhof, Bharat Krymo, Zeneca, OSF, MoonOverlord, icebergy, Deeze, Andy8052, and Keyboard Monkey.

Conclusion

Blur’s accomplishments in such a short span of time are nothing short of legendary considering the adversary it had to pit itself against. Add to its impressive lineup of investment backers and the huge success of its airdrop, and there is very little room for improvement or criticism. Especially during a bear market and after the so-called “bursting of the NFT bubble”. Perhaps there wasn’t any NFT bubble at all. Maybe Blur is really just showing us here how NFTs are a mainstay for the web3 economy.

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