NFT Marketplaces Compete For Users While Bear Market Moves On

Despite cratering prices and declining volumes, NFT marketplaces continue to improve their offerings in an effort to attract users.

In the past week, Sudoswap launched its v2 iteration, Blur cracked down on wash traders and other airdrop spoofers, Kraken launched its NFT trading platform, and LooksRare unveiled a liquidity mining program.

The flurry of updates comes despite top NFTs underperforming the broader crypto markets, with only 12 of the top 50 collections posting a gain against ETH over the past 90 days, according to NFT Price Floor.

But many in the ecosystem have faith that the heady highs of 2021 will one day return, with developers competing to ship new products and grab NFT market share in time for the next bull season.

Blur cracks down on Airdrop spoofers

Blur, the leading NFT marketplace by volume, so on Wednesday that users engaged in laundering or counterfeiting will not be eligible for their second season of liquidity mining rewards.

Blur quickly rose to prominence after launching in February with an aggressive liquidity mining program that promised to reward users for avoiding OpenSea, the previously dominant marketplace.

However, some users are attempting to game the rules, and Blur will now exclude wallets that turn out to be wash trades, falsify bids with orders that cannot be executed, or transfer NFTs to list on rival platforms from receiving BLUR rewards. Blur plans to distribute 300 million BLUR tokens (worth $127 million at current prices) during Season 2.

“Bid points have been updated to reward bidders who take real risks with the most points,” Blur said. “BLUR rewards will go to users who truly contribute to Blur’s growth.”

Blur’s daily volume has been trending between $10 million and $20 million since May.

Blur also launched Blend, an NFT lending protocol, last month. The protocol already represents more than 80% of NFT lending volume and drives close to half of Blur’s overall business.

SudoSwap V2

On Thursday, Sudoswap, an automated market maker for NFTs, deployed its v2 iteration.

The upgrade introduces on-chain royalties, conditional orders, gas optimizations to reduce fees by up to 25%, and support for the ERC-1155 multi-token standard. The new Creator Settings feature also allows creators to configure customizable royalties.

Sudoswap enjoyed explosive growth after its launch in July 2022, with daily volume hitting a record high of more than $3 million in August, according to DappRadar. But volume has steadily declined since, with daily volume peaking at just $19,220 in the last 30 days.

Sudoswap hopes to take a dominant position in the emerging NFT DEX space, avoiding competing in the increasingly crowded market space.

LooksRare Liquidity Rewards

Blur was not the first NFT marketplace to try to dethrone OpenSea using liquidity mining rewards, with LooksRare briefly being the top NFT platform by volume when it launched in January 2022.

The startup platform handled hundreds of millions of dollars in daily volume through January and early February last year, but activity has slowed to less than $10 million since May 2022.

LooksRare is now looking for a comeback, announcement its own reward season on June 1. However, the campaign is unlikely to threaten Blur, with traders competing for approximately $385,000 worth of LOOKS tokens.

Kraken launches NFT Marketplace

On June 8, Kraken, a top crypto exchange, opened its NFT marketplace to the public.

KrakenNFT currently has more than 250 collections, including support for Reddit’s collectible avatars. The platform offers fee-free trading, supports a variety of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, and also has an integration with Polygon’s PoS sidechain.

KrakenNFT launched in beta in December 2022. Kraken processed $508 million worth of cryptocurrency trades in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.