What is Blur NFT Marketplace and How to Use it?
Blur.io is an NFT Marketplace on Ethereum mainnet that was launched on October 19, 2022 and has quickly become the #1 trading platform for NFTs by volume.
Unlike other marketplaces that target retail users, Blur is designed to cater more to professional NFT traders.
Blur's vision is to empower the NFT trading community. Unlike NFT markets, Blur was designed specifically for pro traders with specific trading needs.
It has a sleek interface, analytic tools, and floor-sweeping capabilities that have made it easier than ever to perform frequent trades. On top of that, Blur offers zero platform fees and optional royalties, making it a cheaper alternative to its competitors. This guide will give you full details of the Blur marketplace.
What is Blur.io?
Blur.io is a professional NFT trading platform that offers a convenient and cost-effective solution for traders. It does not charge any transaction fees and recommends a default royalty rate of 0.5% for buyers, which can be customized or even set to 0.
Blur is a trader-friendly platform that allows users to easily buy, sell, and trade NFTs with no hassle. It also provides a secure and reliable environment for users to store their digital assets. With its user-friendly interface and low fees, Blur.io is the perfect platform for professional NFT traders.
Source and Copyright © Blur
Who Created Blur?
The NFT marketplace was co-founded by Tieshun Roquerre, who goes by “Pacman” online, and a pseudonymous individual. The identity of Roquerre remained a mystery until he decided to self-doxx in February 2023.
Roquerre was able to raise $5 million from Namebase before selling it to Namecheap within three years. Generally speaking, the team behind Blur consists of individuals with experience from MIT, Citadel, Twitch, Five Rings Capital, Square and Brex.
Apart from Pacman, Blur was built with the support of Paradigm. In March 2022, the platform raised $11 million in a seed round led by Paradigm. Other notable backers in the NFT space include Punk6529, NFT expert Zeneca, and Cozomo De Medici, famous rapper Snoop Dogg's pseudonym in the NFT space.
Source and Copyright © Twitter
How To Use Blur NFT Marketplace?
Despite the tag of being designed for more advanced NFT traders, Blur operates like most NFT trading platforms. This means that users are required to connect their crypto wallets before they can trade NFTs on the platform. As of June 2023, the marketplace supports four crypto wallets: MetaMask, WalletConnect, OKX Wallet and Coinbase Wallet.
Source and Copyright © Blur
After connecting a wallet, users can browse through the top and trending collections on the platform or upload and connect their existing NFT assets.
NFT traders can purchase digital collectibles through Blur from fellow users and creators. When utilizing Blur's native marketplace, traders are required to pay royalty fees to the creators, also known as supply-side fees. Users can also access other features like the aggregator, which allows them to purchase several NFTs at a time on different marketplaces. Meanwhile, the platform offers two user modes: trader and collector. The trader category offers more charts, more data and a condensed view while the collector mode displays a cleaner view with bigger images and a familiar interface.
Source and Copyright © Blur
Unique Features of Blur NFT Marketplace
Speed
The trading platform does not only laud itself as the “fastest NFT marketplace” but also claims to enable 10 times faster sweeping. While this claim is subject to debate, Blur is among the fastest NFT aggregators and marketplaces in use today. It is built to support fast batch minting and purchases. This is useful for traders who snipe rare traits.
That said, listings on the platform are updated every four seconds, and pending NFT transactions are displayed within a second.
Listing Options and Analytics
Blur NFT marketplace provides access to a wide array of cutting-edge portfolio options and NFT analytics. Traders can leverage the built-in analytics to manage their portfolios more effectively.
Sweep Functionality
Sweeping essentially involves buying several floor-priced NFTs in a collection. This process can be quite cumbersome depending on the popularity and demand for the digital collectible. Advanced traders often rely on bots to speed up this process. Blur makes sweeping an NFT collection easy. In addition to its zero trading fees and optimized gas contracts through bulk listings, the platform has a floor-depth chart for each collection that helps traders to make more accurate projections.
Royalties
In 2022, the issue of creator royalties became a big deal in the NFT space. The fracas led several NFT marketplaces to choose between enforcing creator royalties or allowing buyers to decide whether or not to pay royalties. Blur takes a slightly different approach toward royalty enforcement.
First, NFT owners can specify creator royalties for their tokens when they list them on the marketplace. Users are generally incentivized to pay royalties and those who support creator royalties benefit from loyalty points in the form of BLUR tokens.
What is Blend on Blur?
Blend on Blur is a peer-to-peer lending platform introduced by NFT marketplace Blur to enhance NFT liquidity and accessibility. The platform enables collectors to buy high-value NFTs with a smaller initial payment, similar to a house down payment. This financing option allows new buyers to enter the NFT market, making expensive collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunk NFTs more attainable.
Developed in collaboration with Paradigm, Blend expands Blur's reach into the DeFi space and offers a flexible, fee-free lending protocol that supports various collateral types and adapts to market-driven rates.
Blur NFT Marketplace Fees
Blur has a very trader-friendly fee structure and does not charge any transaction fees for users on the platform. In terms of royalties, which are mandatory for a certain percentage of secondary transactions on other marketplaces, Blur recommends a default royalty rate of 0.5% for buyers. However, this can be customized and even set to 0 if the user wishes. Overall, Blur.io offers a more convenient and cost-effective platform for professional NFT traders.
$BLUR Token Airdrop
The Blur platform recently completed its $BLUR token airdrop after Season 1 of the incentivization program finished. Users were rewarded 'Care Packages' for providing liquidity and trading on the platform, which were available to be opened on the 14th of February at 12PM EST. Some traders earned up to $3 million in $BLUR tokens and the project launched at an eye-watering $400 million valuation.
Blur have another round airdrops coming for 'Season 2'. The best strategy to earn $BLUR tokens in the next airdrop is to use the platform by buying, selling and listing your NFTs on the platform.
Source and Copyright © Blur
BLUR Tokenomics
Blur has minted 3 billion BLUR tokens, which will be made accessible over 4 to 5 years. The token allocation is divided into 51% for the community, 29% for past and future core contributors, 19% for investors, and 1% for advisors. A community treasury of 360 million BLUR tokens, equivalent to 12% of the total token supply, can be claimed by NFT traders, historical users of Blur, and creators.
The community treasury will distribute 39% of the BLUR supply through contributor grants, community initiatives, and incentive programs, with 10% allocated to the next incentive release. The vesting of BLUR tokens will occur continuously according to a set schedule for each group of token recipients.
BLUR Marketplace Growth
The airdrops and incentives of Blur have seen its growth in trading volume to top other markets. Since its launch, Blur leads all NFT marketplaces in trading volume.
According to data from the blockchain analytics from, Dune, Blur has been recording an average daily sale of $21.26 million since it launched last year.
Over 571,000 users have visited the platform since it launched, with an average of over 2,137 trading on Blur every day. The highest single sale of a digital asset recorded on Blur is valued at $598,078, from the mfer NFT collection. The marketplace growth data of Blur puts it as the fastest-growing NFT marketplace in the industry's history. Blur achieved this amidst a decline in NFT trading.
OpenSea vs. Blur
Blur and OpenSea are the two big fish in the NFT space. Blur targets traders, while OpenSea may be better suited to retail buyers and people using blockchains other than Ethereum.
| Marketplace | Decentralized | Token | Buyer Fees | Seller Fees | Collection Sales History | Real-Time Prices | Multiple Blockchains |
| Blur | Yes | Yes, BLUR governance token | None, gas fees only | Gas fee for listing, 0.5% minimum creator royalty | Yes, detailed charts | Yes | No, Ethereum only |
| OpenSea | No | No | None, gas fees only | 2.5% fee on all secondary sales (excluding promos), 0.5 minimum creator royalty | No, per-NFT sales history only | Yes (beta) | Yes, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, Solana |
Blur vs. LooksRare
Blur doesn’t charge a trading fee, but LooksRare does. Where do those fees go? Well, they’re shared with LOOKS token holders who stake their tokens on the platform. Compared to Blur, LooksRare is a bit easier on the eyes, but you’ll have to dig a bit more to find analytics.
| Marketplace | Decentralized | Token | Buyer Fees | Seller Fees | Collection Sales History | Real-Time Prices | Multiple Blockchains |
| Blur | Yes | Yes, BLUR governance token | None, gas fees only | Gas fee for listing, 0.5% minimum creator royalty | Yes, detailed charts | Yes | No, Ethereum only |
| LooksRare | Yes | Yes, LOOKS utility token | None, gas fees only | 2%, including 0.5% creator fee, plus gas fee | Yes, new analytics section | Yes | No, Ethereum only |
A Blurred Future
Blur is hardly the only company competing against OpenSea. The landscape has become much more diverse over the last year as new players enter the market. The increased competition has led to existing marketplaces having to try new things beyond the realm of royalties and fees.
Many have branched out to offer support on additional chains, such as Magic Eden setting up shop on Ethereum or OpenSea offering support for Avalanche.
Taking a leaf out of Blur’s book, LooksRare is due to roll out its own revamped rewards system. Rarible meanwhile is pushing for more community marketplaces — branded, community-run platforms geared towards specific collections — to give them more control over the sale of their own collections.
The likes of Pevzner remain optimistic. There’s currently a lot of emphasis on the needs of traders, but in order to gain back market share marketplaces will also need to start catering more to the needs of creators and collectors.
“I believe that the current marketplace market share wars will eventually work through to a state where royalties are honored,” he says.
“Fundamentally it's in everybody's interest.”
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the Blur DAO?
Blur DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) launched by Blur.io to take charge of the governance and management of the NFT trading platform. The Blur DAO was created to give power back to the NFT community, allowing them to have a say in the core decision being made about the project.
Is Blur marketplace safe?
The Blur marketplace is generally as safe as your crypto wallet. Transactions on the protocol are funded through your wallet, and you’ll need to authorize these transactions. However, you’ll need to deposit ETH to bid on NFTs. Blur runs as a decentralized application on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s a computer program, which means there may be bugs or exploits. The Blur documentation published by the Blur Foundation links to the most recent audit of the code performed by Debaub. But remember that nothing is completely safe in cryptocurrencies, so always be careful and do your own research.
How Many BLUR Coins Are There in Circulation?
As per data from CoinMarketCap, Blur has a circulating supply of 410,470,186 BLUR of the 3 billion tokens minted at the official blur launch.
Over the next five years, the Blur treasury will distribute 39% of the BLUR token supply through contributor grants, community initiatives, and incentive programs, with 10% allocated to the next incentive release.
What Are the Benefits of Using Blur?
Blur was created with professional traders in mind. As such, the marketplace offers 10 times faster swapping, zero marketplace fees, NFT trending tabs, airdrops for loyal traders, and the ability to spot rares faster.
Blur is a powerful trading tool, which makes it a near-perfect fit for those in the NFT space
