- The newly emerging NFT marketplace Blur.io surpassed OpenSea in sales.
- Blur’s native token plunged by 22% since last week after a series of airdrops.
- Blur.io inorganic trading raises concerns as Nansen names Blur top gas guzzler.
Blur.io NFT marketplace stormed into the NFT game with zero fees and a native token that can be earned by trading NFTs. With this fresh approach to the NFT market, Blur surpassed the leading NFT marketplace OpenSea in trading volume, scoring $460 million more in NFT sales just a week after the native token launch.
Incentivized Liquidity Does the Trick
Despite the common misconception that Blur NFT marketplace dishes out rewards for trading activity, Blur uses the “incentivized liquidity” structure, thus enabling the users to reap the rewards for holding assets. Twitter recently clarified this: “Trading/flipping is not incentivized because that leads to inorganic volume.” However, part of Crypto Twitter is not buying it.
Currently, all three top traded NFT collections are created by Yuga Labs. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), and Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) scored 101,091 Ethereum (ETH) combined in the last seven days, which converts to a whopping $167,027,604. Naturally, many crypto enthusiasts on Twitter suspect these transfers could have been made by the same largest whales.
On the other hand, generative art NFT projects like Opepen Edition NFT and VV Checks by Jack Butcher received their moment of shine along with metaverse gaming projects like Mixverse. On top of that, the iconic Porsche 911-themed NFT collection, launched by the German carmakers, is doing fairly better than on previous NFT marketplaces with a 2.11 ETH price floor. However, the success is overshadowed by intensifying wash allegations.
Top Gas Guzzler Washes Away 80%?
The allegations of wash trading resurfaced last Friday when the leading NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam announced that they are removing $577 million “due to market manipulation,” even claiming that 80% of NFT trading activity on Blur.io is inorganic and done by 1% of the highest bidding traders.
However, the estimate has doubled since Monday, reaching above $1 billion. At the same time, CryptoSlam explains that “these actions are taken to protect NFT investors and ensure the industry has clarity and trust in data reported on the website.” Ultimately, the data aggregator claims that the data simply “misrepresents the whole NFT market.”
On The Flipside:
- The most popular NFT marketplace OpenSea also recorded $6.6M in wash trading volume, up to around 2% of its total trading volume.
- NFT marketplaces that offer token rewards for staking or trading are often a target for hackers in an attempt to exploit the yield system.
Why You Should Care:
Blur.io is the leading NFT marketplace by trading volume, even though its native token was launched just a few weeks ago.
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