NFT Market Gets a Boost from $400M Blur Airdrop

Trading volume on paradigm-supported marketplace surpasses OpenSea

Blur, currently the largest NFT marketplace on Ethereum by trading volume, took a critical step towards decentralization this week, sending its users newly minted governance tokens that will give them a say in the direction of the protocol.

The BLUR airdrop rewarded active NFT traders and comes as a welcome stimulus package to an industry that has seen a steep decline in trading activity year-on-year.

BLUR has a total supply of 3B tokens, of which 360 million, or 12%, could be claimed by qualified users on Tuesday. As of Wednesday evening, New York time, BLUR was trading at $1.15, valuing the airdropped tokens at more than $400 million.

This much free money has not been distributed by a crypto protocol since the Layer 2 network Optimism launched the OP token in April 2022.

Since its public launch last October, Blur has positioned itself as the most promising competitor to OpenSea and an ideological rival. OpenSea has long dominated the NFT market, but Blur has recently gained ground on the back of an airdrop campaign aimed at stimulating use of the platform.

Since December, trading volume on Blur has topped that of OpenSea in all but two weeks, according to data collected by Hildobby, a pseudonymous data analyst at crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly.

However, it should be noted that OpenSea still has a commanding lead in terms of active users despite the increasing volumes on Blur.

Popular NFT collections have seen trading activity rise since the token launch, indicating that collectors can use their airdrops to purchase more NFTs.

On Wednesday, Bored Ape Yacht Club volumes increased over 500% compared to the previous day, according to OpenSea data. Meanwhile, nearly ten times as many Moonbirds changed hands.

Blur has positioned itself as the marketplace for professional traders. Announcing an $11 million seed round led by crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, Blur said its mission was to “move the NFT space toward institutionalization while increasing decentralization.”

With its airdrop, Blur has started to do well on the latter. And on Wednesday, it sought to further separate itself from OpenSea when it comes to royalties to creators, a hotly contested topic that has major implications for the NFT space as a whole.

Aiming for OpenSea

Due to technical limitations, NFT creators must currently select one marketplace to enforce royalty payments on secondary sales of their work.

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“Our preference is for creators to be able to earn royalties on any marketplace they whitelist, rather than being forced to choose,” Blur wrote in a blog post published Wednesday. “To encourage this, Blur enforces full royalty on collections that block trading on OpenSea.”