OpenSea Rival Blur Revives NFT Activity: Glassnode
Blockchain intelligence platform Glassnode published a report on Wednesday that analyzes how Blur – the new hotspot for NFT trading – is slowly reviving the non-fungible economy on the chain.
The firm noted a 94% increase in gas consumption from NFT-related transactions on Ethereum over the past 2 months.
The Rise of Blur
As the report explained, Ethereum gas fees have become more expensive this month, with the median transaction gas price rising to 38 gwei, compared to roughly 10 to 20 gwei over the past nine months. That’s higher than the cost of gas during both FTX’s fallout in November (36 gwei) and Binance’s bank-driven event the following month (24 gwei) – both events creating high demand for block space that increases the cost of transactions.
“Upon further investigation … we can determine that a primary source of this increasing network activity is the NFT market, which is again showing signs of growth,” Glassnode wrote.
NFTs had a slow 2022, with both trading volume and floor prices for peak collections plungesand various analyses revealing that the NFT economy was full of laundering. OpenSea – the longtime king of NFT marketplaces – was forced to lay down 20% of employees in June due to the bear market and macroeconomic pressures.
Blodet has given room for a new NFT marketplace and aggregator – Blur – to flourish. Launched in October, Blur has already begun to dominate 78% of NFT transfer volume using a “zero trading fee model with optional royalty payment.”
Despite moving to a separate zero-fee model in the wake of the competition, OpenSea has so far failed to compete with Blur’s meteoric rise. According to Glassnode, this is because Blur has attracted a community of professional traders, as opposed to OpenSea’s historical target audience of “creators and collectors”.
Typical Blur users now make 4 to 5 trades per day on the platform, compared to OpenSea’s average of just two trades per user.
“A higher sales frequency can create a flywheel effect, as more NFT sellers feel confident listening on Blur’s platform, creating a larger supply, which in turn attracts more buyers,” the report said.
NFT adoption
While gas values look promising, overall NFT adoption appears unaffected by Blur’s growth. Glassnode’s data indicated that the growth of new addresses on Ethereum remains 40% below what it was in February last year. This means that Blur’s users appear to be primarily existing Ethereum users, rather than brand new network participants.
Looking at Bitcoin, however, the discovery of NFTs in December has triggered a wave of adoption for its 2021 Taproot upgrade. Stacks, a related protocol that also enables NFTs, has climbed 50% in the last week.
