Blur overtakes OpenSea even as monthly NFT trading falls below $1 billion for the first time in 2023
Upstart NFT marketplace Blur, even as the overall market retreated, dominated OpenSea in trading volume for the month of May.
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The NFT marketplace, which stands out for its crypto rewards for traders, achieved $442 million in sales, surpassing the $183 million in sales of longtime leader OpenSea, according to a Thursday report from DappRadar. Blur now has 65% of the total NFT market share, while OpenSea, which has over 300,000 more users, is hanging on at just 27%. Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment on the report.
The growth of Blur, which burst onto the scene in October, has been fueled by token airdrops where it gives away free cryptocurrency to loyal users. In its first airdrop, some of the top claimers took home more than $1 million in free crypto, according to Decrypt.
Last month, the marketplace launched Blend, an NFT lending product that now accounts for 50% of the marketplace’s total volume, according to the analysis platform Dune. After just one month, Blend has outperformed all NFT lending protocols and facilitated more than 21,962 loans with a total value of around $319 million.
Still, Blur’s huge trading volumes have been criticized for encouraging constant trading by users trying to earn as much free crypto as possible. In February, crypto analytics platform CryptoSlam said it would remove trades worth $577 million it had credited to the platform due to “market manipulation,” Decrypt reported.
The overall NFT market fell in May, falling below $1 billion in monthly trading volume for the first time this year. Total volume fell 44% to $675 million from $1.2 billion in April, according to DappRadar. Despite the decline, overall sales fared slightly better, falling by around 24% to 3.6 million from 4.8 million.
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