Keep Your Eye on the Blur v. OpenSea Fight: Galaxy

The day after its third and final highly-anticipated airdrop, Blur dropped more news: Creators cannot currently earn royalties on both Blur and OpenSea. The solution according to Blurs’ founders? Block trades on OpenSea.

On Friday afternoon, OpenSea said it was moving to optional creator fees, with a 0.5% minimum, and it will no longer block creators from listing on marketplaces with the same policies.

We’re making some big changes today:
1) OpenSea fee → 0% for a limited time
2) Moving to optional creator earnings (0.5% min) for all collections without on-chain enforcement (old & new)
3) Marketplaces with the same policies will not be blocked by the operator filter

— OpenSea (@opensea) February 17, 2023

NFT traders should keep their eyes on the ongoing tussle between OpenSea and Blur, according to Galaxy analysts.

“The fact that most top traders on Blur effectively wash traded to farm the airdrop indicates that Blur’s volume may not have been organic compared to OpenSea’s,” researchers wrote.

OpenSea said in November that creators looking to collect royalties had to block other marketplaces that did not fully honor the fees. Blur hasn’t fully eliminated royalties, but the net-effect of their revised policy is reducing the royalty percentage to a bare minimum of 0.5%, regardless of creator preferences, per analysts.

Creators must block OpenSea if they want to collect their self-determined royalty percentage on Blur.

“Clearly, Blur is using their leverage to pressure OpenSea to collaborate with them instead of acting hostile with their block of Blur,” Galaxy said. “Time will tell if Blur’s strategy will pan work, but they’ve been the most successful OpenSea competitor to-date both in terms of metrics and product.”

NFT marketplace Blur released its first tokens Tuesday, pumping and plunging the token, but researchers at Galaxy anticipate relatively stable trading volume going forward — at least in the short term.

After Blur’s native BLUR tokens dropped, their price briefly climbed to $6 on some exchanges, before falling to around $0.60 and finally settling in the $1 range.

There is a total supply of three billion Blur tokens, and 360 million were claimable on Tuesday. Tokens were allocated based on activity on the Blur exchange.

“There are two key things to watch with respect to Blur,” Galaxy researchers wrote in a Friday note. “The most obvious is how much market share Blur can retain now that their $BLUR token is liquid. In the short term, we don’t expect a serious drop-off in trading volume due to the fact that Season 2 of their token incentive program will run for at least another 30 days.”

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