In a highly controversial move, OpenSea is cutting fees to 0% for a “limited time”.
In a highly controversial move, OpenSea is cutting fees to 0% for a “limited time”.
The race to the bottom in the NFT market will see OpenSea adopt the no-fee model of its main rival Blur.
Cover/illustration via Cryptooshala
OpenSea, the leading NFT marketplace, announced in tweet On February 17, it will take a controversial step to temporarily waive its market fee, intensifying the battle for market share with the zero-fee platform Blur.
Major Changes in OpenSea
- Temporary market fee of 0% by default on all collections with no on-chain royalty enforcement.
- Optional royalties starting at 0.5%
- OpenSea operator change enabling Blur to interact in the marketplace, ultimately allowing creators to generate revenue across both platforms.
OpenSea cited cutthroat competition in the NFT space as the reason for its policy change.
“The NFT ecosystem has undergone major changes,” the Twitter post reads.
“In October, we started noticing significant volume and users are moving to NFT marketplaces that don’t fully support creators. Today, this shift has accelerated dramatically, despite our best efforts.”
OpenSea also announced that it will review its block list of other marketplaces that do not pay full royalties to creators and will now allow sales on NFT marketplaces with similar policies, including Blur.
$BLUR economics
Competition between OpenSea and Blur has intensified since the launch of Blur’s own token on Tuesday.
BLUR is currently ranked #117 among all cryptocurrencies by CoinMarketCap with a 24-hour trading volume of $509 million; The coin is currently trading at around $1 after being launched on February 14th at a price of $5.
Shortly after the airdrop, the token’s trading volume reached $500 million.
The battle for NFT market share heats up
On February 15, Blur surpassed OpenSea in terms of trading volume for the first time since its inception in October.
Despite Blur’s daily loss, OpeaSea’s weekly volume was much higher. According to Nansen’s latest data, OpenSea’s weekly trading volume was 36,608 ETH. In comparison, Blur’s weekly volume was only 11,424 ETH. Between February 7 and 14, OpenSea had an average of 8.37 times more sales than Blur and about eight times more wallets. However, the gap between the two platforms has narrowed and was the smallest on Wednesday.
OpenSea had 19,908 sales that day, just 1.63 times more than Blur (12,185 sales). A similar trend can be observed in the number of active wallets on each platform. The difference between them is now only two times, demonstrating that the competition between the two largest markets is becoming more intense.
NFT royalty debate
On Wednesday, Blur posted Blog post aimed at NFT creators, outlining the differences in how royalties are paid between the two platforms and encouraging users to blacklist OpenSea so creators can receive full royalties.
debate Royalties caused a rift between the two platforms, and OpenSea took a hard line on the issue, launching a royalty enforcement tool in November, which they have since abandoned despite widespread calls from artists who claim that royalties act as their de facto pensions in the digital economy Web3.
Theoretically, royalties were once considered the holy grail for NFT advocates and touted as one of the important reasons why artists should use blockchain technology. In practice, this is at risk as a race to the bottom has led many NFT platforms to eliminate fees and royalties.
“Today, ~80% of the ecosystem’s total volume is not paying out the full profits of creators, and much of the volume (even including non-organic activity) has moved to a zero-fee environment,” OpenSea acknowledged on Friday.
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