NFT trading volume in Ethereal it has crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time since May 2022. This is the third month in a row that volumes have risen, signaling a turnaround in the NFT market, which suffered badly during last year’s recession.
Data of radardapp shows Blur leading the way with over $1.3 billion in trading volume alone. The new NFT marketplace is followed by OpenSea, with less than a third of this figure at $442 million.
Interestingly, it is the competition between these two markets that has boosted NFT trading volumes. Blur, for its part, has done its best to displace OpenSea as the preferred destination for NFT traders. After its launch last October, the market has presented a series of incentives aimed at attracting users to its platform.
The first was to remove the mandatory royalty payment from creators, a source of income and motivation for creators. The hack worked and forced marketplaces like OpenSea to do the same. However, Blur’s 0.5% royalty fee is considered nominal and has caused controversy within the NFT marketplace industry. The decision has not gone down well with influential figures within the Web3 community. According to Yat Siu, president of Animoca Brands, creator royalties must be protected at all costs.
In statements to the press, he points out, “I get the feeling that Blur isn’t necessarily against royalties.” But what they and other markets are doing is “trying to capture market share”.
Blur’s reward structure has increased its NFT trading volumes
Blur also introduced its $BLUR token reward strategy to attract collectors to its platform. This worked like magic as traders scrambled to make the most of their opportunity. The first tokens arrived last month and saw users rewarded with $360 million BLUR, after which the platform announced plans to give another 300 million tokens to prolific traders.
Unfortunately, indications show that most of Blur’s trading volume may be the result of wash trades, as traders compete to increase their own reward allocation. Since February, CryptoSlam, a leading NFT tracking platform, attributed 80% of Blur’s volume to wash trading. As a result, he intends to remove the stats since “misrepresents the current NFT market and puts traders who often chase rising action on projects at risk.”
💥CryptoSlam Update: We’re Cleaning Up Wash Trades
⚡️We are taking steps to remove nearly $500 million in wash trades, retroactively, in addition to applying an updated algorithm to prevent future wash trades.
⚡️This comes after they took a similar action https://t.co/ArHdTqRe08… https://t.co/9OHvQKhgLe
-CryptoSlam! (@cryptoslamio) February 24, 2023
While increasing volumes are a good thing for the NFT market, these latest numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
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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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