Emerging NFT market Blur may have put up an open battle against the erstwhile market leader, but the latter appears to be making a comeback, albeit slowly.
According to Dune Analytics data compiled by sealaunch.xyz, the percentage of unique users on OpenSea has seen an uptick since it plunged in mid-February.
Simultaneously, it was discovered that there has been a significant decrease in the average sale size per user on Blur after the airdrop. Since the event, the trading volume of major collections such as CryptoPunks, BAYC, Otherdeed, MAYC, Meebits, Moonbirds, CloneX, and Doodles decreased on Blur and increased on OpenSea.
BLUR, the governance token, was released to users last week. The tokens even amassed over a billion dollars in trading volume.
1/ From @blur_io airdrop, @open sea seems to be regaining volume market share (at a slow pace).
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check the @DuneAnalytics board here
📊 https://t.co/SUjGKFMxRg pic.twitter.com/v2cDi88CVX— sealaunch.xyz (@SeaLaunch_) March 3, 2023
Blur vs. OpenSea
As part of their takeover strategy, Blur updated their royalty policy which states that NFT creators cannot earn royalties on Blur and OpenSea simultaneously. During its November launch, Blur refrained from imposing full royalties; it did not impose a fee that creators charge for secondary sales of their digital collectibles. Rather, it was up to the buyers to choose to honor an artist’s royalty policy. However, this was later extended to royalties with a minimum fee of 0.5%.
OpenSea reportedly needed new collections to prevent Blur from receiving forced royalties. The latter then attempted to circumvent this blocked list by developing a new marketplace on OpenSea’s Seaport protocol. The goal was to allow creators to receive full royalties on both platforms.
Last November, OpenSea unveiled collections seeking forced royalties that must be blocked by markets that do not fully honor them.
NFT sales volume skyrocketed in February of this year, reaching levels not seen since the Terra implosion. Blur mainly contributed to the increase. He overcome OpenSea in trading volume.
Market manipulation accusations
Blur’s trading volume shot above $1 billion in February. Although the numbers have since declined, the volume was reportedly generated by a small number of whales trading NFTs back and forth to accumulate BLUR tokens through the company’s incentive scheme.
Cryptoslam, a leading platform for tracking NFT sales, saying would remove $577 million in Blur transactions from its data citing “market manipulation.”
It further revealed that 80.5% of Blur’s sales volume since February 14 has been wash trade. By contrast, only 2.6% of OpenSea sales volume was commercial laundering during this same time period.
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