NFT marketplace Blur continues its success story, attracting 84 percent of the total volume of all Ethereum (ETH)-based NFT sales in the first week of March. Competitor OpenSea looks perplexed.
The competition between NFT marketplaces currently knows only one winner: in 2023, Blur, a platform that only launched in October 2002 but then quickly overtook previous leader OpenSea in sales, has emerged as the market leader. Data for the first week of March show: Blur handled 84 percent of NFT sales for those based on Ethereum (ETH), leaving only crumbs for OpenSea and other vendors. Nearly $400 million has been transacted by Blur in Ethereum NFT sales in the last seven days, also demonstrating that while the repeatedly invoked slump in NFT markets is palpable, it is not leading to a collapse.
According to data from DappRadar, an ETH NFT on Blur fetches an average price of about $1,000, so this is where high-quality NFTs change hands. For OpenSea, the average price per Ethereum NFT is just under 270 US dollars. Ethereum-based NFTs account for around 90 percent of the total market and are therefore the benchmark for Blur and OpenSea. Most recently in January, OpenSea had narrowly defended its market leadership among NFT platforms.
But in February, BLUR was launched, a separate token of the marketplace of the same name. BLUR was distributed free of charge via airdrop to loyal customers and creators at launch, and a promotion is currently running again. OpenSea has so far not countered this strategy of using BLUR to create an additional monetary incentive for doing its NFT business on Blur. OpenSea’s decision to temporarily reduce fees to zero has not been able to stop the changing of the guard.
Conclusion: BLUR has turned the NFT market around
BLUR made its stock market debut in mid-February and recently showed little movement in the price curve, settling at around $0.60. But that’s apparently enough to get NFT traders and collectors to give OpenSea the cold shoulder and switch to Blur. Rumors that OpenSea is also planning its own token have never been confirmed. Experts are currently lacking a bright idea on how OpenSea is supposed to compete with Blur again.
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