Despite its recent success, the journey for Blur to become the biggest NFT marketplace is far from over, and evaluating its current and future success is a complex matter.
NFT marketplaces are currently embroiled in fierce competition for customers, with companies lowering their fees and royalties to entice and keep users. This competition has resulted in the gradual weakening of royalty fees, a crucial revenue source for many NFT creators who feel abandoned by the marketplaces that once supported them. This “race to the bottom” is causing significant disruption to the entire NFT ecosystem.
Read more: Why we need more NFT royalties and better marketplaces
Is Blur’s volume real?
Blur has surpassed OpenSea in the overall value of sales made through its platform, but the data has sparked a debate about its true significance.
One factor contributing to Blur’s success is its rewards program, which awards points to traders for listing and bidding on NFTs. These points can be exchanged for BLUR tokens, with the number of tokens received based on the number of points accumulated.
Since there are no marketplace fees or royalties, the only obstacle preventing users from gaming the system and earning tokens by purchasing their own listings with a different wallet is the need to pay gas fees.
However, last month, CryptoSlam, a tracker of NFT sales data, claimed that this is precisely what was happening on Blur. In an email to its subscribers, CryptoSlam stated that only 1% of high-value traders were responsible for the bulk of trading activity on the platform.
As a result, CryptoSlam took action and removed hundreds of millions of dollars in Blur trades from its data, citing “market manipulation.” It has since implemented an updated algorithm that filters out “suspicious” sales.
During the period of February 14th to February 25th, CryptoSlam identified over $577 million in wash-traded NFTs on the platform.
According to CryptoSlam, sales data from Blur is “misrepresenting” the NFT market. The potentially artificial surge in sales has boosted the industry’s overall sales volume to its highest level since Ja
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Author: Dorian Batycka