How Blur catches up with Opensea?

PART 1

industry analysis

The NFT market has dropped significantly compared to last year

• Sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) fell this week to a daily average of about $19,000, down 92% from their peak of about $225,000 last September.
• The number of active wallets in the NFT market has fallen by 88% from a peak of 119,000 in November last year, with only about 14,000 remaining last week. *Both OpenSea and Blur observed a downward trend in daily unique users and sales, likely due to a mix of factors.
• The reasons for the decline in users and sales are still unclear and may be affected by "macro conditions". It could also be due to high gas prices and tax season cash flow issues.

For a long time, Opensea has been a representative of the entire NFT market, occupying 70%-90% of the market share

• Several challengers tried to challenge OpenSea's monopoly, but were unable to topple OpenSea (such as Magic Eden, LooksRare, X2Y2, Gem.xyz, and Sudoswap).

New player Blur has entered the market and shattered all expectations, surpassing OpenSea's transaction volume

*Opensea still leads the NFT market in the number of NFTs being sold/traded and has more unique users.

• Blur dominates the market in terms of transaction volume, surpassing OpenSea despite a decline in NFT transaction volume.

No need to compete for today's small user base transacting on-chain

• More than 45% of the NFT market volume comes from blue-chip NFT investors.
• 24% of volume comes from 1% of NFT whales on Opensea.
• The top 1% of Blur wallets account for 70% of the TVL, and only 100 traders account for 46% of the transaction volume.

PART 2 Competition Advantages and Disadvantages Comparison

When BLUR launched, the buyer's perspective:

Provide the right tools for professional NFT transactions

• Whale investors can get rid of a large number of NFTs on Blur, and the bidding function of the platform is similar to automatic order matching, further incentivizing liquidity.

Low Fee

• The problem for investors is that Opensea's total fees are very high. It used to be 15 times as big as Blur. (Opensea: 7.5%. Blur: 0.5%)
• Blur's zero platform fees attract traders and investors.
• Massive NFT transfers by whale traders (71 BAYC, 11 Mutant Ape Yacht Clubs (MAYCs), 7 Azukis and BEANZ NFTs), much cheaper fees compared to Opensea. The price remained stable and did not drop immediately.
• The news went viral, and many whale investors quickly piled into Blur.

Token Incentive

*Blur utilizes the $BLUR token as a strategy to attract whale investors to its platform. *The $BLUR token is designed to provide unique value to professional NFT traders, offering them the opportunity to benefit from a lower fee structure on the platform.

• Many traders believe that Opensea will not use tokenization as a marketing tool because Opensea is pursuing an IPO rather than an ICO.

Faster Speed

• According to Blur's official statement, Blur is ten times faster than GEM (Opensea Pro), basically achieving the fastest list information update among all platforms.

1. Waiting time: 0.4 seconds (BLUR) vs 9.4 seconds (GEM)
2. List update time: 4 seconds (BLUR) vs 51 seconds (GEM)

• It is important to be fast, as users may not be able to submit transactions or miss opportunities, resulting in lost gas fees if submissions are not completed in time.

fluidity

*Many NFT marketplaces, including Opensea, do not have real-time order books. (refresh base system) *Blur uses the platform as a real-time spot exchange for NFTs.

When Blur started to pose a threat to Opensea, Opensea announced that it would charge the same fee as Blur and issue tokens. In addition, Opensea has released Opensea Pro, which is designed for professional traders. However, despite Opensea's aggressive and rapid improvement efforts, Blur still maintains its edge thanks to its better UI/UX, price change and transaction history charts, and faster speed.

PART 3 Compared to what used to be called "Opensea Killer"

1. LooksRare, X2Y2 and OpenSea are all NFT marketplaces with similar browsing, purchasing and listing experiences.

• There is no big difference in user experience

2. Blur's airdrop strategy: never incentivize trading volume, only incentivize liquidity and pending orders

*Many other markets launching airdrops tie token rewards directly to trading volume, failing due to high wash trading rates (whether in NFT markets or DeFi markets)

1. Pushed the metrics up, but everyone knows those are fake.
2. It is also difficult for developers because it is impossible to speculate on how the platform will perform.

PART 4 **Conclusion: What can we learn? **

**1. Airdrop and tokenization are to attract customers to the platform, and latecomers should be treated with caution. **

• Tokenized airdrops for the community will not last long. When holding an airdrop event, the efficiency of the token airdrop should be highly considered. *Platforms that usually have airdrops face sustainability issues because as the number of reward tokens decreases, the number of users also decreases.

**2. When they get the airdrop, the next step is the fundamental value of the platform. **

*Looksrare and X2Y2 launched before Blur, failed to differentiate in user experience, and exhibited similar designs and features.

**3. Professional traders are an important customer segment for latecomers. **

• Professional users are more sensitive to better service and incentives.
• As Web3 still has not reached mass adoption, professional users account for the majority of the market, especially in the NFT market.