“40.1% of adults in the U.S have heard of NFTs” — ByBit
Now there’s NFT drama that everyone should be aware of.
Up until recently, the market leader for NFT buying and selling was OpenSea. As of January 2022, OpenSea was valued at $13.3B coming off of fresh new funding in a Series C round.
Spent some time looking at @richardchen39’s OpenSea, Dune Dashboard…
In Dollars:
Monthly Volume in January 2022: $4.8B
Monthly Volume in January 2023: $446M
In ETH:
1.6M ETH vs 306K ETH
Now let’s look at the new competitor in town, Blur.
Blur, a trader-focused NFT marketplace, raised an $11M seed round in 2022 and is rumored to be raising over a $1B valuation currently. Blur just launched their native token, $BLUR, and FDV is tracking $3.6B already.
According to SeaLaunch’s Dune Dashboard…
Highest Daily Volume: February 19th, 2023 with over 58K ETH
Highest Daily Sales Count: Over 66,000 sales on February 20th, 2023
Okay, aggregators are tough. The race to running a sustainable business also launches a race to 0 within fee competition for certain types of business models.
It’s an uncontrollable journey to undermine every fee structure in the market.
A brief synopsis of everything that happened this week:
BLUR was airdropped to users
OpenSea responds to Blur’s increased market share by cutting back fees “temporarily”
Both platforms make creator earnings optional
Blur will only distribute full royalties on collections that block trading on OpenSea
Long story short: Blur is siding with the creators, and OpenSea is fighting to win back its primary market.
This won’t be the last NFT marketplace fight we see. The space is heating up and the competition will only grow (ie. Uniswap).
The real question: Will a competitive platform issuing a token & incentive to users be strong enough to keep a sustainable market share? Will OpenSea fight back with a community adoption plan that incorporates a loyalty program?
NFT creators must attract the largest audience possible. Traders are looking for the most advanced solution. Brands are trying to reach retail customers. Marketplaces need to sustain themselves financially.
This isn’t healthy for regulatory clarity or mainstream adoption, but let’s give it some time and see how the competition plays out as we are indeed, VERY EARLY.