Upstream NFT Market, Blurhas declared war on the leading NFT market, Open sea. In a statement published on February 15, Blur promised to enforce full creator royalties for any collection that blocks trading on OpenSea. The move comes in retaliation for what Blur calls OpenSea’s “non-competitive practices” which he believes was looking to harm the young NFT market.
Yesterday we made an update to our royalty policy. Here’s the accompanying blog post: It was meant to go out yesterday, but due to the chaos of the launch, we weren’t able to post until now. https://t.co/jeRcQYkvAr
– Blur (@blur_io) February 15, 2023
In a blog post, the Blur team describes the policy change as a defensive survival tactic. “Creators who whitelist both OpenSea and Blur should be able to earn royalties on both platforms.” before adding “Today, OpenSea automatically sets royalties as optional when it detects transactions on Blur. We would like to welcome OpenSea to stop this policy so new collections can earn royalties everywhere.”
Blur launched last October and has quickly grown to become the main competitor to OpenSea’s domain. Part of its growth has been driven by incentives that sought to attract merchants to its market. For example, the recent airdrop of the BLUR token was designed to attract traders to the platform, and it worked to a degree. There were times when Blur was able to post higher trading volumes than OpenSea, although a significant fraction could be attributed to wash trading.
The other incentive was making creator royalty fees optional at the height of the NFT bear market in a bid to encourage trading on their platform. While some marketplaces followed suit, OpenSea would toy with the idea before succumbing to creator protests to introduce a tool that would allow creators to block trading of their NFTs on marketplaces that weren’t honoring royalties.
OpenSea Policy Blur
This affected Blur’s appeal to NFT artists, as royalties, especially for featured collections, can generate millions of dollars in revenue. Currently, the platform only imposes a minimum creator royalty of 0.5%; however, merchants can pay more if they wish. This pales in comparison to OpenSea, where creators can claim 5-10% on the secondary sales of their works.
Their decision to return to OpenSea has been welcomed by some users, who see it as an inevitable result of OpenSea’s initial offensive move. While it’s unclear how long Blur can sustain its newfound popularity following its blockbuster airdrop, it seems the market is hell-bent on capitalizing on it by addressing perceived past injustices.
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*All investment/financial opinions expressed by NFT Plazas come from the personal research and experience of our site moderators and are intended for educational purposes only. People are required to fully research any product before making any type of investment.
Basil is an avid fan of blockchain technology and all its innovations, and he is passionate about sharing this narrative with his audience. He has spent over five years in the crypto space, specializing in research and creating Web3 content for various media outlets around the world.
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