Blur overtakes OpenSea, Ethereum NFT trading soars

While the NFT market has been growing for two months and Ethereum NFT collections are leading the way with more than doubled trading volume, Blur is overtaking OpenSea with its new token and an appealing rewards program.

According to DappRadar, Blur overtook OpenSea in 7 days with the Ethereum trading volume of more than $515 million, while OpenSea generated only around $322 million. Both marketplaces show significant growth in Ethereum volume, with +436.25% and +238.29% respectively. The third largest NFT marketplace, X2Y2, generated $10.29 million during the same period and recorded a 34.25% drop.

Overall, NFT sales volume stands at $648.5 million with an increase of 156.32% in 7 days, according to CryptoSlam. This figure is mainly generated by Ethereum-based NFTs. However, Ethereum NFT volume growth was even more significant at +186.31%, rising to $586.3 million.

The growth in the NFT market comes a week after Blur launched its $BLUR governance tokens as a reward for NFT traders. In addition, $BLUR is also available on the open market.

Related: Blur debuts token

The BLUR token market capitalization is 478 million and its current price is $1.23, according to CoinGecko. In 7 days, $BLUR recorded an increase of 88.7%. However, the rise of BLUR isn’t only due to traders selling tokens to buy and hold high-value NFTs, as market sentiment suggests. On the contrary, NFT whales were spotted flipping their high-value holdings to increase BLUR token rewards.

For example, the top-selling NFT project is Otherdeed, the NFT land plots of Yuga Labs’ upcoming metaverse game Otherside, which grew +336.65% in 7 days and generated $65.7 million in total revenue. The largest seller of Otherside NFTs is MachiBigBrother, who is involved in 1.277 trades, generating over $4,3 million, according to Decrypt findings.

This is facilitated by Blur’s unique marketplace model, which not only widely incentivizes high activity by promising rewards for tokens, but also specifically encourages traders to use trading pools that allow for massive NFT trading.

Decrypt adds:

Blur is teasing its next “Season 2” token airdrop, and specifically notes that traders that “bid on top collections closer to the floor get more rewards.” In other words, traders that put in a bid close to the floor price—that is, the cheapest available NFT for a certain project—of a popular project will maximize their eventual rewards. They’re both buying and selling in bulk as a result.

However, even as we see increasing numbers across the NFT market, it’s mostly whales trading with each other.

we aren’t growing the pie. It’s the same folks circulating assets + eth around and around

— Naveen (,) (@NaveenSpark) February 18, 2023

Related: Half of 2022 NFT volume is wash trades