Upstart NFT marketplace Blur, market leader OpenSea’s biggest rival in recent months, is set to begin its delayed airdrop of BLUR tokens today to reward Ethereum NFT traders.
Blur launched its marketplace last October with the promise of token rewards for traders, and provides users with “care packages” that represent incoming token allocations. Users can finally open their care packages and claim Ethereum-based tokens today, with an estimated launch date after 1:30PM ET one late morning delay,
The marketplace has provided token allocation in three waves to date. The first wave was introduced to qualified Ethereum NFT traders, who used a competitive market six months prior to Blur’s launch. The second wave was for Blur users who listed their NFTs for sale on the market through November, while the final wave is for traders bidding on NFTs through Blur.
it’s time for $BLUR
Care packages can be opened on February 14th at 12PM EST, 1AM HKG, 6PM CET.
Make sure the launch is announced by our official @BLUR_io Please double check all URLs before claiming and account tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/tSbOPLqYTW
— Blur (@blur_io) February 13, 2023
Blur initially planned to drop governance tokens to eligible users in January, but then delayed the airdrop to today. “We’re Trying New Things,” Bazaar Tweeted on January 19, “and the extra two weeks will allow us to deliver a launch that hasn’t been done before.”
Billing itself as a “marketplace for pro merchants”, Blur raised $11 million in a seed round led by Paradigm and announced in March 2022. Like Looks Rare and other marketplaces that have sprung up since the rise of the NFT market, Blur is trying to create one. audience by providing potentially valuable token rewards to merchants.
Anticipation of the pending token drop has clearly fueled the rise of Blur over the past few months, with the marketplace occasionally topping OpenSea in terms of NFT trading volume.
However, the hype around token rewards has also raised doubts about how much “wash trading” is happening on the platform as users potentially manipulate trades to boost rewards. This is what happened with LuxRear in early 2022, as users traded NFTs between their own wallets at artificially inflated values to manipulate the rewards model.
However, Blur has not delivered billions of dollars of suspicious-looking trades, unlike Luxrear last year. But data shows that Blur has far fewer active traders and transactions than OpenSea last week, despite posting higher overall trading volume.
Data from analytics platform Dune shows that around 13% of blur trades are classified as suspicious wash trading, compared to around 2% for OpenSea.
We’ll see if Blur continues the growing momentum it has had in recent months after users trade off the airdrop incentives in mind. Notable crypto exchanges such as Coinbase and Huobi have already announced plans to support the BLUR token after launching trading today.
Editor’s note: This article was updated after publication to reflect the changed airdrop timing.
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