REPORT: Blur.io in H1 2023

TL;DR:

• Blur’s weekly market dominance sits at around the 70% mark, with all-time highs seen in February, at approximately 83%.
• Blur’s monthly volume hit highs of around $230 million in February 2023.
• There have been only 4 weeks in 2023 wherein Blur did not possess more than 50% market share of Ethereum NFT volume, and this has not been the case since January.
• Blur’s user and transaction numbers are lower than those of competitor, OpenSea, but this is counteracted by an average NFT price of nearly 17x more (~$1.66k)
• Blend (Blur Lend) launched in May, and dominates/created the NFT lending market, with a market share of approximately 95%.

What is Blur?

Launched in October 2022, Blur.io is fundamentally an NFT marketplace. However, with countless NFT marketplaces, across multiple chains, now available in the industry, there are certain aspects to Blur’s platform that have driven its unprecedented success so far. 

Firstly, Blur enforces no platform trading fee on its users. Compare this to other marketplaces, such as OpenSea, that regularly exert fees of as much as 2.5% on NFT traders using their platforms. Blur also leads within the industry on speed of updates, with updates recurring every four seconds. Speed of information can be crucial for profitable NFT-trading and this can make Blur a preference for professional traders, over other marketplace competitors.

Blur’s functionality also exceeds that of competing platforms, on several fronts, with functional collection sweeping, and advanced analytics features, neglected elsewhere in the industry. 

Combined with Blur’s carefully designed user experience, which offers ETH-price and gas fee tracking, as well as rarity data and an attractive UI, and the factors that have driven Blur towards becoming the #1 NFT marketplace are clear to see. 

Blur’s Market Dominance

Blur’s hoarding of Ethereum-NFT trading volumes is no secret, with the marketplace breaking headlines in December 2022, not two months after its launch, when it overtook OpenSea in weekly trading volume for the first time, according to data from Dune Analytics.

This trend has continued well into 2023. 

There have been just four weeks in 2023 wherein Blur has been responsible for less than 50% of total weekly Ethereum NFT volume, with those weeks falling in only January. 

Indeed, of those weeks, just one saw an alternative marketplace accrue more volume than Blur’s platform, according to data from Dune Analytics – That marketplace being OpenSea.

Recent weeks have seen Blur’s market share maintain approximately a 70% level, whilst its closest competitor, OpenSea, holds approximately 20%, according to data from Dune Analytics. 

Throughout the first two quarters of 2023, the highest weekly market share that Blur has seen was in February, at 83%, with its lowest week falling in January, with 41%. 

Blur’s Trading Volume

Blur’s most impressive month, by total trading volume seen by the platform, came in Q1 of this year. 

February, a resurgent period for the NFT market at large, saw Blur’s marketplace accrue approximately $230 million in NFT trading volume. Blur’s best-performing week to-date, was the week ending February 20, wherein some $84 million in NFT trades flowed through the platform. 

Certainly, said week typified a boom in NFT volumes across the board. However, at that time, the second largest NFT marketplace was OpenSea, which saw just $15 million in volume in the same period. 

Usership and Transactions

Figures surrounding Blur’s periodic usership, and unique trades, are especially interesting, and appear to reflect the platform’s mandate of being the go-to destination for ‘professional’ NFT traders.

It is currently rare to see Blur rank anywhere but first when it comes to NFT marketplace performance and activity figures. However, Blur remains second to OpenSea when it comes to individual traders using the platform. 

Recent months have seen the number of NFT traders actively engaging with Blur’s platform hover largely within the 3,000-8,000 range, with spikes toward the higher end falling across the month of June.

Unsurprisingly, Blur’s most active month for unique traders came in February, wherein the week ending February 20th saw more than 65,000 NFT traders utilize the platform. 

Blur’s industry-defining transaction volumes have been manifested by daily trades numbering between 4,000 and 15,000, with weekly transactions of as high as 66,000 (February) or as low as just 3,400 (early May).

Blur’s ability to lead the NFT market in terms of total trading volume, whilst ranking second (after OpenSea) for unique traders and unique transactions, may be explained away by the platform’s mandate of catering toward ‘professional’ traders. That is, traders whose individual transactions are likely to be higher in value than those of casual collectors and traders.

Indeed, data from DappRadar appears to reinforce this fact. According to the data-platform, at time of writing, the average value of an NFT sold on Blur is approximately $1,660. Compare this to OpenSea, a platform geared more toward the NFT collector, which holds an average NFT value of less than $100. 

‍Token: $BLUR

One further element that sets Blur aside from many other marketplaces competing in the Ethereum-NFT vertical, is its possession of a native token; In this case, $BLUR.

$BLUR was launched on February 14, 2023, amidst perhaps the most hotly anticipated airdrop of the last twelve months. Users that listed NFTs on the platform, made bids for NFTs, or satisfied other criteria, were airdropped ‘care packages’ containing an undetermined amount of the $BLUR token.

$BLUR is itself an ERC-20 token, and its primary use case is governance over the Blur platform. At time of writing, $BLUR holders possess governance authority over fees for both Blur’s marketplace platform, as well as the more recently introduced Blend (Blur Lend).

Again, this decentralized governance element of the Blur platform is something that sets it apart from alternative marketplaces, such as OpenSea, that are wholly centralized and for-profit in nature. Though the impact is impossible to assess, the extent to which Blur has chosen to engage its community could be a significant factor behind its rise to prominence over the last year.

$BLUR is already listed and available on tier-one exchanges, such as Kraken, Kucoin, and Coinbase, and, according to data from CoinMarketCap, holds a market capitalization of nearly $250 million, and a fully-diluted value of nearly $800 million.

What is Blend?

Perhaps overlooked as a result of the success of its core platform, is the Blend (Blur Lend) platform. 

Launched at the beginning of May, Blend is Blur’s own peer-to-peer perpetual NFT lending and borrowing platform. Being decentralized, Blend is not reliant on oracle services and its loans are able to operate without expiry. 

Blend matches would-be borrowers with would-be lenders, allowing the market to decide when a loan is accepted and/or liquidated. For a more comprehensive examination of Blend’s mechanisms, see this blog post by Blur investor, Paradigm. 

Blend’s intended purpose is to advance the maturity of the NFT-specific financial markets and, like its parent platform, Blend imposes no fees on its participants, with any changes to be decided on by $BLUR token holders. 

Blend so far…

Upon examining Blend’s performance in the industry so far, we can quickly see that its successes have been overlooked by the ecosystem at large. 

On the one hand, it is certainly fair to say that Blend now dominates the NFT lending and borrowing industry. However, perhaps a more accurate assertion is to say that Blend has, in effect, created the NFT lending and borrowing market. 

As a snapshot, the week ending June 19 saw Blend accrue nearly $200 million in loan volume, with its closest competitor, NFTFi, seeing less than $5 million in the same period. Within its first week of operations, Blend was responsible for 80% of the total NFT lending market, and that figure now sits closer to the 95% mark. 

Before Blend, the total weekly market size was less than $20 million. However, with said market now sitting largely between $100-200 million on the weekly, it is in this respect that Blend can be considered to have made the NFT lending market, in and of itself. 

At time of writing, Blur boasts a total loan volume of more than $1.7 billion, and the platform is fast approaching the 150,000 mark, when it comes to the actual number of loans accepted. 

Since its launch just 3 months ago, the number of daily borrowers and lenders utilizing the platform have been in the ascendency, exhibiting a steady climb to the figures seen today.

Blend supports a growing number of high-profile NFT collections with regards to its loans, including DeGods, Mutant Apes, Pudgy Penguins, and Bored Apes. However, by far its most popular collections are Azukis, and Milady’s, which currently see close to 1,000 individual loans between them.

At time of writing, there are more than 3,200 active loans facilitated by the Blend platform, and a current loaned value of more than 9,500 ETH.

Blur in H1 2023 – Takeaways

The first half of the year has been cold for the NFT market at large, with overall NFT volumes sagging well below the levels seen in 2021, or early 2022. However, within that landscape, Blur has succeeded in compounding its advantage, first exhibited in Q4 2022, when it overtook OpenSea for market share. 

Blur’s weekly volumes are now at the point where they effectively eclipse those of competing Ethereum NFT marketplaces, with the platform taking home nearly three quarters of weekly volumes in recent weeks.

The only major metrics not led by the Blur marketplace are centered around individual users and transactions, and this may be explained away by Blur’s intention of becoming the go-to platform for professional traders, typified by average NFT transaction value of nearly 17x that of OpenSea.

Not to be overlooked is Blur’s 3-month old NFT lending platform, Blend (Blur Lend), which not only sees around 95% market share, but has, it seems, been responsible for creating an NFT lending vertical which, until its launch, was sized at less than $25 million on the weekly.

Overall, it has been an encouraging first half of 2023 for the world’s largest NFT marketplace. 

Blur has consolidated its market share, weathering the ongoing NFT bear market, and expanded its offering to include an NFT lending platform, which has in turn increased the size of the NFT lending vertical exponentially. No doubt, Blur is working on further developing each of its existing platforms, and has plans to grow both its own success, and the NFT market more broadly.