Blur is a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace designed for professional traders' needs by emphasizing speed and lower gas fees. The platform also addresses the issue of royalties by allowing all traders to customize the royalties charged on each listing. If a user does not specify a desired royalty amount, Blur defaults to the highest royalty percentage across competing NFT marketplaces, such as OpenSea, LooksRare, and X2Y2.
Blur was founded in March 2022 by the pseudonymous developer Pacman (revealed to be Tieshun Roquerre in February 2023) to create an NFT marketplace that met the desired speed capabilities of professional traders. The marketplace initially launched in Private Beta and was only accessible to a select group of NFT traders that joined the waitlist. Access was granted according to a user’s waitlist points, which were calculated by the NFT trading volume in 2022 and the number of people that joined the waitlist by invitation for the user. While in Private Beta, Blur gained significant traction and managed ~30.00% of all NFT trading volume. The protocol also reached the top six gas users on Ethereum.
In November 2022, OpenSea began requiring new NFT collections to block Blur in order to have royalties enforced on OpenSea. Blur attempted to be removed from the blocklist by adjusting its own royalty policy for new collections to comply with OpenSea’s royalty policy. OpenSea denied Blur’s request by insisting that all (past and future) NFT collections on Blur comply with OpenSea’s royalty policy. To circumnavigate OpenSea’s embargo, Blur integrated the decentralized SeaPort protocol, developed by OpenSea, that has access to all collections trading on OpenSea. This solution prevented OpenSea from further interference. Users on Blur can buy and list assets on OpenSea, as well as LooksRare and X2Y2, through Blur’s marketplace aggregator.
Blur was opened to the general public on Oct. 19, 2022, and the project team announced its intention to launch the BLUR token on the same day. BLUR was originally scheduled to be released in January 2023; however, on Jan. 19, 2023, the project team announced via a post on “X” that the token launch was to be delayed until Feb. 14, 2023. The extra time would be used to “deliver a launch that hasn’t been done before.” This airdrop, known as “Season One,” included the following four phases in which users could earn the right to receive tokens from the airdrop:
The ERC-20 BLUR token was deployed on Ethereum on Jan. 31, 2023, and airdropped to qualified parties on Feb. 14, 2023. Since the token’s launch, two additional airdrop seasons have occurred:
As BLUR is the platform’s governance token, the project team also launched its community governance feature alongside the token. Tokenholders can vote in the governance process to influence several of the platform’s parameters and treasury management.
The most recent addition to Blur is the NFT lending protocol Blend. This feature was released on May 1, 2023, allowing users to purchase an NFT for less than the full value through financing the remainder of the sale price via daily interest.
