OpenSea vs Blur: Tracking The NFT Marketplace War

The NFT Marketplace war heats up. Here's
how Opensea and Blur stand head to head. Crypto Twitter is already talking
about an NFT marketplace war And they're not wrong. Opensea and Blur have been trading punches
over the last few months already, But the rivalry intensified with Blur's
airdrop in mid-February. For the first time ever in NFT
marketplaces Is not only challenging Opensea,
but has at least temporarily Overtaken Opensea
as the market leader for a long time. Opensea was the number one NFT
marketplace. Looks were seen to challenge
the market leader for a while, but Could not sustain the positive momentum
after its airdrop. Is following a similar yet
entirely different strategy. The first key difference between Opensea
and Blur is the respective Target audience. While Opensea was going after everyone,
a Blur identified whale traders As the key to attacking the incumbent. Blur's CEO Pacman, who recently doxxed
himself, said as much in an interview. This translates Directly into Blur's different approach
to encouraging platform loyalty. It's much anticipated airdrop
incentivized trading. More precisely, it incentivized traders
to bid for NFTs close to the floor And thus earn traders loyalty points
which later translated into blur. Moreover, Blur
encourage loyalty for listings as well. Traders that listed NFT use only on Blur
received 100% of their allocated Loyalty points, and those who did not had
to do with a discounted rate. Opensea has no token yet. The pressure is mounting on Opensea,
but so far The platform has relied on its market
dominance and first mover advantage. But discontent about its approach
has been bubbling and Opensea centralized Decision making has been criticized
on numerous occasions, Such as when it banned
all Iranian artists from its platform. Knowing that decentralization

Is a good vector of attack in the crypto
space, Blur ran with that narrative. Blur's first move after its launch in
October, was to go after Opensea in price. It reduced trading fees to zero
and cut royalty fees. Opensea responded by enforcing A block of all collections listed on non
royalty fee paying platforms. This stemmed The outflow of value from opensea to blur,
but only for a while, eventually Found a way to bypass Opensea block
and set the stage for the great airdrop. The airdrop event was a smashing success. Not only did it
generate loads of attention in the space, But it also turned blur
into one of the top protocols on Ethereum. This forced Opensea hand, leading
to a temporary suspension of royalty Fees to defend its market
share in a particularly audacious move. Blur turned
the tables on OS daring creators To block listing on Opensea
to receive full royalty fees. The marketplace wars are well
and truly on now, but is Blur A fundamentally better platform
than Opensea? Casual users probably won't see a big
difference between the two, but traders And heavy users benefit from a better
UX specifically geared towards them. The situation for Opensea,
it looks particularly concerning When you compare the latest data
of the two platforms. I look at Hildobby’s Dune Dashboard, comparing Opensea and Blur
reveals an interesting development. There had been leading Opensea
in trading volume for a while, Thanks to the airdrop Incentives that caused accusations of wash
trading on Blur over After the airdrop on February
15th, trading volume exploded on Blur And this could be due to the second season
of the Blur airdrop being underway By trading on Blur. Users can rack up points now And this of course
translates into more elevated volumes. And still the numbers are impressive,
especially because it doesn't Stop at trading volume. Blur has overtaken Opensea in weekly
trading count,

But is also closing the gap in weekly user
count and fast. Even though a share of trades is wash Trading, it looks like Blur is heavily
eating into Opensea's market share. Blur now even leads in royalty
fees and royalty paying transactions Except for unique user count,
Blur has now overtaken Opensea on all metrics,
so how sustainable is this? As Nansen notes, the top 100 traders on
Blur make up a significant share of its Trading volume, and analysts caution
that the top traders are forming blur Just like they were farming
other marketplace tokens before that. Still, no marketplace has ever eaten
as much into Opensea dominance As Blur has managed Opensea dominance
in the weekly trader count. The only metric it still leads in
is down to a historic low. Is this a changing of the guard
and where do we go from here? The NFT space has been long Barreling down, opens his door
to launch a token with the leader exposed. It may have no choice but to give in. Although there is arguably
a share of traders farming Blur's Next airdrop, the longer Blur sits
at the top spot as the NFT marketplace, The stronger its brand becomes, And a token could be a relatively
manageable, if not inexpensive way To fight fire with fire. And the trend has been
the same every time whale traders follow The financial incentives and that could be
Opensea is ultimate trump card. OS tokens or not The NFT space is merging
with DeFi for good. Blur has forced other marketplaces To compete for the biggest wallets
with incentives first and UX second. Both are geared towards traders,
not towards creators. Mass enforcement of royalty
fees looks dead in the water, And the new market leader
will be a defined platform First and creator platform second. Vertical marketplaces will rise. This opens a niche for smaller
marketplaces targeting specific niches. Strong brands will have the means
and incentives to launch their own Marketplaces.

Creators may be in together
in target collectors over traders To ensure they are paid for their work
entirely. New monetization
mechanisms could arise from this too. In a race to the bottom for royalty fees And creators will have to find creative
ways around trader dominance. And one thing is for sure, the NFT
marketplace wars are far from over. So who do you think will win?