Blur Overtakes OpenSea and Gas Fees Soar

In a significant milestone for Blur, the newbie NFT marketplace has overtaken OpenSea in daily NFT trading volume. Blur’s daily trade volume hit 6,602 ETH on Wednesday, February 15, crossing OpenSea’s 5,649 ETH for the first time ever. Moreover, Ethereum gas fees are also soaring due to the increasing trade activity. Reportedly, Blur has now surpassed UniSwap and Seaport to become the top “Gas guzzler” on Ethereum. 

Here’s all you need to know about Blur overtaking OpenSea:

Blur Overtakes OpenSea: What happened?

A recent report by the data analytics platform Nansen.ai found that Blur overtook OpenSea in daily trading volume for the first time on Wednesday. Interestingly, another analytics platform, Dune, reported a much higher difference in trading volumes between the two. According to a Dune dashboard by sealaunch.xyz, Blur and OpenSea’s daily trading volume hit 30,410 ETH and 7,232 ETH, respectively. 

At the time of writing, while the trades significantly decreased, Blur continues dominating the market with 20,428 ETH. Meanwhile, OpenSea is only at 4,369 ETH. 

Reportedly, Blur is currently valued at $1 billion. The marketplace’s daily trading volume grew almost 4X after it released its native token, further cementing it as a strong OpenSea competitor. Furthermore, last week, Blur released a blog post asking its users to block sales of their NFTs on OpenSea. The move came as a pushback to OpenSea’s earlier decision to ban NFT marketplaces that offer optional royalties.

Meanwhile, Blur has surpassed Uniswap and Seaport to be the top Ethereum gas guzzler (accounts that consume a lot of Gas). This is natural given how NFT trading has significantly gone up on the marketplace. And the more active the network, the higher its transaction fees. 

Why is Blur popular?

Firstly, Blur is funded by some of the who’s who of the Web3 space, including Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures & E-GIRL Capital. Then, it offers users some attractive perks such as no trading fees. On February 15, it dropped its native token, BLUR, rewarding its most active users with token airdrops. Needless to say, the airdrop was a tremendous success, resulting in Blur’s trading volumes soaring significantly. 

All in all, Blur airdropped 360 million BLUR tokens. Currently, it boasts an all-time trading volume of $1.59 billion. According to DappRadar data, the marketplace has also overtaken OpenSea in 7-day ($435.24 million)  and 30-day trading volume ($711.83 million).

OpenSea vs Blur: The feud explained

For long, OpenSea has been the biggest NFT marketplace in the space. Then came Blur, a royalty-optional marketplace, with several attractive features. Amid the creator royalty debate that took steam last year, OpenSea made a bold move: to ban NFT marketplaces that offer optional royalties. To explain, to get full royalties on OpenSea, creators have to stop the sale of their NFTs on royalty-optional marketplaces like Blur.

However, with a new policy update, Blur hit back at OpenSea. The new policy requires its creators to block their sales on OpenSea to get royalties. 

Now, Blur seems to be making giant leaps. Whether it can maintain the top spot and topple OpenSea in all-time trading volume remains to be seen.