After the money-splashing feast, Blur carefully instigates a new round of royalty wars

Written by: Odaily Planet Daily, Tenwen

At 2:30 AM on February 15, the highly anticipated NFT market Blur launched its native token BLUR on major exchanges and opened the airdrop for collection. Thus, this "blind box" airdrop event has finally landed.

As the leader of this year's "small uptrend" in the NFT market, Blur is considered capable of competing with the industry leader OpenSea. Additionally, during last year's NFT market royalty war, Blur found a way to attract traffic by becoming part of the optional royalty system, allowing users to freely set royalty rates while also incentivizing users to pay royalties through airdropped tokens (for example, buyers who set royalties above 0.5% will receive more airdrop rewards). With this series of measures, the traffic on the Blur market once surpassed that of OpenSea.

In this highly anticipated airdrop, Blur did not disappoint users, and the wealth effect was significant. Some Twitter users reported that the largest BLUR airdrop beneficiary received 3.2 million BLUR, and approximately 25 individual wallets became "millionaires" with over a million BLUR.

While everyone was immersed in the joy of the Blur airdrop season, Blur seized the opportunity to open a new chapter in royalty competition. Just one day after the token launch, it released a new royalty policy, one of which recommends NFT creators to blacklist OpenSea, and any NFT projects not using OpenSea will be enforced to collect full royalties on Blur. Clearly, Blur is using this opportunity to strike back at its strongest competitor, taking the first baton in the new year's "royalty battle."

From the explanatory article released by Blur, the new royalty policy involves four options. Based on the article's content, Odaily Planet Daily provides a brief interpretation:

1. If the collection does not use a blacklist to prohibit zero royalty or optional royalty markets, Blur will help you enforce a minimum royalty of 0.5%, while OpenSea offers optional royalties ------ Blur provides a minimum guarantee for creators.

2. If the collection uses a blacklist, although bids cannot be placed on Blur, trading can still occur on Blur (using the Seaport protocol). Such collections can earn royalties on both OpenSea and Blur, but Blur only enforces a minimum royalty of 0.5%. This has already been confirmed, as projects like A KID Called BEAST and Sewer Pass have now dropped to a minimum royalty of 0.5%.

However, when Blur established a backdoor for new projects through Seaport, all previous collectibles could earn "full royalties" from both OpenSea and Blur. The latest royalty policy, however, only allows for a minimum of 0.5% royalties, and some creators of collectibles were not informed in advance about the policy changes. Blur has silently completed the update of the royalty policy, which can be seen as a silent warning to creators using blacklists.

3. The third point is the recommended option from Blur, which hopes creators will blacklist OpenSea, allowing them to receive full royalties on Blur but not be able to list on OpenSea. Does this sound familiar? This is the same approach OpenSea initially took towards Blur, now being returned in kind.

4. The fourth option is for both parties to cancel the blacklist mechanism, "I, Blur, will put aside past grievances and reconcile with you," allowing both sides to genuinely protect creators and enable them to collect royalties on all platforms.

Looking back at Blur's past royalty policies, they have always been relatively moderate, trying to avoid conflicts with OpenSea. Even though OpenSea blacklisted it, Blur maintained an intention to reconcile, hoping to lift the blacklist restrictions, but was firmly rejected by OpenSea. At that time, although Blur's trading volume and popularity were approaching OpenSea, a large number of wash trades and a significant gap in user numbers still prevented Blur from competing with giants like OpenSea.

However, as Blur gradually occupies the top traffic in the NFT market and OpenSea has yet to release a platform token, expectations for the value of Blur's token have gradually increased. After three rounds of airdrop "blind boxes," the number of users on Blur surged. Among them, whales almost monopolized the leaderboard, briefly boosting NFT trading volume. This may have given Blur some confidence, so Blur is also trying to take the initiative.

Upon closer observation, Blur's new royalty policy can be described as "meticulously" planned.

First, Blur developed a new trading market using OpenSea's own underlying trading protocol Seaport, solving the problem of new projects being unable to trade on Blur.

Second, although optional royalties have caused many NFT creators to lose part of their earnings, Blur will airdrop to creators who still choose to list on the market. For example, the Twitter account @CirrusNFT stated that its NFT project missed out on $13,700 in royalty earnings over the past few months, but they received $18,500 in BLUR tokens from Blur's creator airdrop, thus compensating for this loss.

Then, they delivered the final blow by launching the new royalty policy: no matter what, you can receive 0.5% royalties from me, and blocking OpenSea will allow you to receive full royalties.

These three moves have effectively grasped the psychology of creators and traders, while also enhancing the liquidity and trading volume of the entire NFT market through airdrop-driven traffic, seizing a large market share from OpenSea and other competitors.

From short-term data, since entering February, Blur's trading volume has gradually surpassed that of OpenSea. Additionally, yesterday, NFT trading volume surged to 30,409.79 ETH, reaching a three-month high. Furthermore, Blur's NFT sales yesterday amounted to 32,773, with 9,689 unique users, both hitting three-month highs. Its bid pool has locked in $84 million, setting a new historical record.

Next, Blur Season 2 is about to begin. Although most people believe that the second season may not offer rewards as rich as the first season, and it remains unclear how long Blur can maintain its popularity after moving away from the "blind box" airdrop. However, after Blur's recent layout and marketing, its competitive advantage has become very apparent.

It seems that Blur is determined to win this time, directly signaling the start of the battle. Assuming OpenSea does not remain stagnant and does nothing, the upcoming NFT market race is expected to see even more intense battles.