NFT Marketplace Blur Announces Closure: Community Celebrates Exit
The announcement of Blur's website shutdown has reignited debate over controversial royalty practices and reward systems that propelled it past OpenSea in the NFT market while damaging artist earnings.
The nonfungible token trading platform Blur, which at one point surpassed OpenSea to become the dominant NFT marketplace measured by transaction volume, has announced plans to close its website next month — a development that has many NFT collectors celebrating rather than mourning.
The announcement came via Blur's X account on Monday, marking the platform's first social media post in over twelve months. According to the statement, the frontend interface will cease operations on Nov. 12, though the onchain marketplace infrastructure will continue to function.
The company's peer-to-peer perpetual NFT lending service, Blend, will simultaneously discontinue matching new loan arrangements. According to Blur's statement, borrowers must settle their outstanding loans or accept default status by the Nov. 12 deadline. The company also committed to providing a withdrawal interface following the closure.
Good riddance. You destroyed NFTs. Please shut down and never come back.
NFT collector Cryptobscure
You may not have been able to complete your mission to destroy NFTs. But you acted with extreme determination and tried everything. Congratulations to us for surviving you.
NFT collector starfruit
The announcement has rekindled backlash against the tactics that enabled Blur to dominate NFT trading rankings in 2023: making creator royalties optional while distributing token incentives that motivated traders to actively bid on and quickly resell NFTs. The platform's ascent catalyzed an industry-wide movement away from guaranteed creator royalties, with competitor OpenSea eventually adopting optional creator fees for newly launched collections.
The platform debuted on Oct. 19, 2022, with a model that enabled sellers to determine royalty payment amounts while providing enhanced potential token rewards to users who elected to pay higher creator royalties.
However, Blur entered an NFT ecosystem where royalty enforcement was already deteriorating: rival platform Magic Eden had transitioned to optional royalties just one week earlier.
Within several months, by July of the subsequent year, blockchain data analytics provider Nansen documented that actual creator royalty fees had plummeted to 0.6% in July 2023 from a 2.5% average throughout 2022, identifying Blur's expansion, its baseline royalty framework and OpenSea's competitive response of reducing its own royalty standards as primary contributing factors.
NFT sales slump from boom-era highs
The company has not provided an official explanation for its decision to discontinue its frontend interface and terminate new lending operations through Blend.
The shutdown announcement arrives during a period when NFT trading activity continues to languish significantly beneath peak levels from the market's explosive growth phase. According to data aggregated by CryptoSlam, September's total NFT sales volume reached $167 million distributed across 2.9 million individual transactions. This stands in stark contrast to the market's zenith in January 2022, which recorded $6 billion in sales spanning 13.7 million transactions.
The cryptocurrency exchange Gemini's NFT platform Nifty Gateway and social collecting service Rodeo both revealed shutdown plans in January, while Foundation announced its permanent closure in April following the collapse of an acquisition deal that would have preserved its operations. Major exchange Binance similarly discontinued NFT marketplace support on its platform, transitioning asset custody responsibilities to Binance Wallet.
Cointelegraph reached out to Blur founder Tieshun "Pacman" Roquerre for comment.