Ethereum NFT Trading Skyrockets as Blur Overtakes OpenSea

In the past week, more than $500 million worth of Ethereum NFT trades took place, and Blur's rewards model has helped it surpass OpenSea.

The market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has experienced significant growth in recent months, and this trend has continued over the past week. According to DappRadar, the volume of Ethereum NFT trading more than doubled in this period, driven by an evolving market where traders are flipping valuable NFTs as they would with DeFi tokens. This surge in NFT trading occurred after two consecutive months of sales growth.

Despite being the market leader in NFT trading, OpenSea has been overtaken by upstart marketplace Blur, which has generated $460 million worth of Ethereum NFT trades in the past seven days alone. This represents a 361% increase over the previous week. In comparison, OpenSea saw a 12% increase in trading volume to $107 million during the same period. X2Y2, the third-place marketplace, had only $11 million in trades during that time.

Over the past week, Ethereum NFT trading volume has surged by 155%, with the upstart marketplace Blur overtaking the leading OpenSea as the primary marketplace for NFT trading. According to DappRadar, Blur generated $460 million in Ethereum NFT trades over the past seven days, a 361% increase over the previous period, while OpenSea saw a 12% increase in trading volume to $107 million during that time.

The surge in trading volume at Blur is not merely due to traders selling off their BLUR tokens and buying high-value NFTs but is being driven by whale traders with significant NFT holdings. They appear to be flipping NFTs with even greater frequency than before to boost potential future token reward allocations. For instance, Otherside, Yuga Labs' upcoming metaverse game, was the largest NFT project in terms of trading volume, with NFT land plots generating $63 million in trades, marking a 318% week-over-week increase.

MachiBigBrother, a well-known pseudonymous NFT trader, was the largest seller during that period, involved in nearly 1,300 Otherside NFT trades yielding $4.3 million in sales. This constant flood of inbound and outbound trades is an example of how Blur's unique marketplace model incentivizes heavy activity with the promise of token rewards, specifically rewarding traders for using bidding pools that enable bulk trading for NFTs. Additionally, Blur airdropped its BLUR governance token to NFT traders who earned rewards through the marketplace, leading some collectors to pour their airdropped funds back into buying NFTs primarily through Blur.

Blur is preparing for its Season 2 token airdrop and has noted that traders who place bids on popular collections closer to the floor price will receive more rewards. As a result, traders are buying and selling NFTs in bulk to maximise rewards. This approach is similar to DeFi, and Blur has incentivized traders to use liquidity mining to maximise the benefits of NFT trading. The impact has been significant, and OpenSea has temporarily cut its own 2.5% marketplace fee to remain competitive with Blur. While OpenSea still has more unique wallets than Blur, Blur has more transactions and a widening gap in trading volume. However, the flood of NFT flipping and rewards farming has muddied the market data and suggests that the NFT market is not growing and onboarding new collectors but primarily serves whales trading among themselves.

“We aren’t growing the pie,” tweeted Web3 project founder Naveen Jain. “It’s the same folks circulating assets and ETH around and around.”