Blur NFT marketplace: will it KILL Opensea?

Boxmining

6.4K views 213 2 years ago

Description

The NFT trading platform Blur marketplace has completely taken over crypto. They market themselves as the next generation NFT trading platform with a tonne of new features and are poised to even revis...

The NFT trading platform Blur marketplace has completely taken over crypto. They market themselves as the next generation NFT trading platform with a tonne of new features and are poised to even revise NFT trading. But is this platform worth all the hype, or will it vanish in a Blur. 0:00 Introduction 0:59 What is Blur 1:53 Blur Airdrops 4:14 Something FISHY... 5:07 Anon Team 7:10 Opinion on Blur ●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Recommendations▬▬▬▬▬▬▬● 📖 Guides, tutorials and insights: https://boxmining.com/ Recommendation List: https://www.cryptoatlas.io/Boxmining 🌼Buy & Sell Bitcoin: https://join.swissborg.com/r/michaeOQZM 🔒Hardware Wallet: http://boxmining.co/ledger 👍🏻Brave Browser: http://boxmining.co/brave 📲Binance Exchange : http://boxmining.co/binance ●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Community▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬● Boxmining clips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjFy3VBgOZanySOLhQu6GaQ Boxmining News Website: https://www.boxmining.com/ Telegram Group: https://t.me/BoxminingFam ●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Social▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬● Twitter: https://twitter.com/boxmining Discord: https://discord.gg/9qCpqpZm8G Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boxmining ●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Disclaimer▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬● I'm not a professional financial adviser and you should always do your own research. I may hold the cryptocurrencies talked about in the video.

AI Analysis

Blur, a new NFT trading platform, has burst onto the crypto scene, generating massive buzz and aiming to challenge OpenSea's dominance. It's a fast-paced, trader-centric platform designed for serious NFT enthusiasts, offering unique features like simultaneous multi-marketplace listing and zero trading fees. However, while its aggressive airdrop strategy successfully siphoned users from competitors, the platform has raised some eyebrows due to its anonymous team and methods that indirectly encouraged wash trading.

Here’s a breakdown of what makes Blur both exciting and a bit suspicious:

* What Blur Is:
* Blur is an incredibly fast, trader-focused platform specifically built for trading NFTs. It's often described as the "nerdy, geeky cousin" to OpenSea, tailored for "NFT nerds" who need efficiency and advanced features.
* It offers powerful features that even OpenSea lacks, such as the ability to list your NFTs across multiple marketplaces all at once with just a few clicks.
* A huge draw is its zero marketplace fees. This is a significant advantage compared to OpenSea's 2.5% or LooksRare's 1.5% fees, making it much cheaper for traders.

* The Smart (and Aggressive) Airdrop Strategy:
* Blur conducted three rounds of airdrops, which were central to its marketing and user acquisition. The first round rewarded loyal supporters with loot boxes.
Subsequent airdrop rounds were ingeniously designed to encourage very aggressive usage of the platform. Blur incentivized users to delist their NFTs from other marketplaces like OpenSea and then list them on Blur at an equal or lower price*. Listing at a higher price wouldn't qualify for bonuses.
* This strategy effectively "vampired" orders from OpenSea, actively pulling liquidity and users over to Blur and rapidly building its network and community.
* A significant portion of Blur's token supply was allocated to these community airdrops, not just a tiny 1-2%. Some users received substantial amounts, with some NFT "whales" getting upwards of $1.8 million worth of BLUR tokens, which was highlighted as an "actually good airdrop."

* Something Fishy is Going On:
* Despite the success of the airdrops, there's a major concern around how trading volume was generated. The airdrop mechanics indirectly rewarded "wash trading."
* Wash trading is where people trade assets among themselves, or between their own multiple accounts, without any real intention of genuine purchase. This was encouraged because the more trades a user executed, the more "care packages" (airdrop rewards) they could potentially receive.
* This practice artificially inflated Blur's trading volume, giving the impression of widespread activity, even though a significant portion wasn't real organic trading.

* The Anonymous Team and Paradigm Capital's Involvement:
* A significant red flag is Blur's anonymous team, led by a persona known as "Pac-Man." The entire team behind Blur has not been doxxed (revealed their real identities).
* Despite the anonymity, the project has been "raising non-stop," suggesting substantial backing. They publicly state they are backed by Paradigm Capital.
* There's a strong suspicion that Blur might not just be "backed" by Paradigm, but could actually be an internal team project of Paradigm Capital. This makes sense given Paradigm's background as a major market maker.
The project also raised funds through an equity round rather than a token round*. This is problematic because it creates two groups of stakeholders: token holders and equity holders. Equity holders, who own a percentage of the company, will always have more sway and legal rights, especially if things go wrong. Token holders, on the other hand, essentially have no legal recourse.

* Skeptical Outlook: High Risk, Medium Returns:
* My take is that investing in Blur right now is a high-risk proposition with only moderate potential returns.
* High Risk Factors:
* The token just launched, meaning it's in a highly volatile, speculative period. There's also been a lack of transparency, with tokenomics only being released on the day of launch.
* The anonymous team carries an inherent risk of the project simply disappearing or running away with funds.
* The equity raise and Paradigm's backing mean the team will ultimately be legally obligated to prioritize the equity holders' interests over those of the token holders.
* The current hype from the airdrop period will eventually subside, and the token's performance afterward is uncertain.
* Medium Return Potential:
* The token initially "rocketed" to $8 but then dropped, now seemingly finding a floor. This behavior is compared to Uniswap's UNI token launch, which also crashed initially before recovering.
* Over 90% of airdrop recipients collected their tokens, indicating an intent to sell. After this initial "dumping" phase by airdrop holders, there could be a recovery.
* While Blur is a strong NFT platform, it's unlikely to reach the "insane volume" of major cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, simply because the overall NFT trading volume isn't as high as the coin trading volume.
* However, if the NFT market heats up again, Blur could potentially capture 20-30% of Binance's trading volume, justifying its moderate potential in the long run.

Transcript

Welcome back to Box Money guys. It's been a minute. I mean one of the reasons why this came about was because Twitter was just full of blur memes, right? The money printer goes blur. Oh my god, blur is gonna save the NFT marketplace. People are gonna buy my shit NFTs now. Okay, alright, calm down NFT bros. No one's gonna buy your shit NFT bags just yet. But is this blur platform that everyone's talking about even worth its salt? If it's worth the attention that everyone's giving it? So that's w...

Welcome back to Box Money guys. It's been a minute. I mean one of the reasons why this came about was because Twitter was just full of blur memes, right? The money printer goes blur. Oh my god, blur is gonna save the NFT marketplace. People are gonna buy my shit NFTs now. Okay, alright, calm down NFT bros. No one's gonna buy your shit NFT bags just yet. But is this blur platform that everyone's talking about even worth its salt? If it's worth the attention that everyone's giving it? So that's what this video is gonna be about. I've got my team here. Whoa! Hello! Whoa! So we're gonna take a deep dive and look into what is happening with blur, including analysis of their tokenomics and what is happening with their airdrop campaign, which is super interesting. And that will help us answer if this NFT platform is really good or if it's only just a blur. Alright, let's just get started. Long time no see you guys. What is blur version for? So, Blair simply said is a very fast trader based platform for trading NFTs. Well, you could be thinking like, well, Jemmy and other fast and cheap, huh? Well, blur does offer a few very powerful features that even OpenSea does not offer. If you go to the blur website and let's say you have an NFT you tried to list on multiple marketplaces all at once, then this could be done by just pushing a few buttons on blur. Second reason I'm loving blur is that if you go ahead and look at the marketplace fees on OpenSea, they are charging 2.5% on OpenSea and on LucasRare they're charging 1.5%. But on blur, they are not charging anything. Alright, we can clearly see that Jemmy loves the platform. I mean, she clearly has NFT bags she needs to sell rather quickly. But a quick summary is that blur is like kind of the nerdy geeky cousin to OpenSea. It's NFT trading platform for NFT nerds. Period. What's interesting about blur, I think it's really the marketing. I mean, we all know that this is going to be a thing. NFT trading is going to be a thing. So how they built this new rival to OpenSea is actually really interesting. So yeah, they did three rounds of airdrops. The first round they gave out these loot boxes for their loyal supporters. And in the second and third rounds, once it got attention, they kind of tuned the formula. So they encouraged very aggressive usage of the platform. And this is where I think it got really smart. Because what they encourage users to do is to delist their NFTs from somewhere like OpenSea and then list it onto blur at an equal or lesser price. You wouldn't even get airdrop. You wouldn't even get airdrop. You wouldn't get bonuses if you listed at a higher price. You don't want to... Nah, that's not cool. You have to list it at the same or lower price in order to qualify. So essentially they created a marketplace. They basically actively vampired over orders from OpenSea. So that was very, very smart. I felt like that was a way to build a community, build a network, and make people actually use their platform in every single step of the community building. Now what's also very interesting is that their community airdrops was a huge part of their token supply. It wasn't just a meager 1% to 2%. Nah, this was huge. And there were people that got upwards of $1.8 million worth of blur. Like, oh wow! That is actually good. Like an actually good airdrop. And you can look at the distribution chart here. I'll bring that very quickly. And this is all analyzed on DUNE. So I'll put a link down below if you want to look at the details of this airdrop. But overall, if you're an NFT whale, you're going to get some pretty good and blurred drops here. So I think it was very smart. They basically gave out free tokens to those who would and can support their platform. So is that all great? Is it all great then? Well, there were a few fishy things that's going on. So I'm going to let Natalie handle that. Hi guys, this is Nat. So is there something fishy going on with Blur? The airdrops obviously did really well, right? Blur has a huge collection of NFTs for sale, which is great, but that's only on the service. Another huge part of the airdrop was that it encourages users to trade more, including indirectly rewarding wash trading. So in case you were wondering, wash trading is where people trade within themselves without any real intent of buying the asset. They just want to make the trade happen because the more trades that you do, the more care packages you can potentially get. So this encourages people to actively buy either from their friends or just make multiple accounts and buy from their own accounts. And this is why the trading volume really got pumped up on Blur. When people start doing this and generate that trade, it gives the impression that people are actively trading. But we all know that it's not real active trading if you're just buying your own stuff, right? So that's the number one fishy thing that we've discovered about this platform. Turning my skeptical hat on, I think something that's really suspicious here is the anonymous team. So Blur has always been doing videos under an anonymous persona called Pac-Man. And Pac-Man is kind of an anime character. So that's, you know, do we trust anime characters in crypto? Is it really that time that we have to go to this? What's also quite interesting is that the whole team has not been doxxed, but they've been raising nonstop. And that suggests to me is that they have a huge backing. Outwardsly, publicly, they've been saying they're backed by Paradigm Capital, but the full cap table of who else has invested is not really fully disclosed. This gives me the suspicion that maybe Blur might even be an internal team project for Paradigm Capital. It kind of makes sense if you think about it, because Paradigm, you know, their claim to fame is they're a huge market maker. They've been trading for a long period of time. So for them to come out with an NFT trading platform product may be interesting. Now, they might not want to take the risk of, you know, issuing a token because, you know, issuing tokens maybe is a security, is it not? But my suspicions are here. And I deeply suspect that the involvement with Paradigm Capital is not just a backer, but probably an internal team. Now, this is good and bad, right? Okay, if they have a good team behind it, who cares, right? But at the same time, one thing that's quite interesting is that when they raised for Blur, they raised on an equity round rather than a token round. Now, the problem with that is that the team needs to look after two groups of people, the token holders and the equity holders. But the problem here and the bigger problem is that equity holders always have more of a sway because you actually own a percentage of the company. So if shit hits the fan and something goes wrong, well, token holders have no rights. You're just the community. But the equity holders, they're the ones that the legal department is going to look after. So that's going to be a problem if you're going to be a token holder of this community. Now, what's my take on this? I'm going to take a skeptical view of this. I'm going to say that this is a huge risk right now to be part of the community, and it's going to offer medium returns. Let me explain my logic and reasoning here. So why do I say high risk? Well, first of all, the token just launched, right? So we're in this highly volatile period. Everyone's speculating. Everyone's trying to gamble and there could be miscommunication floating. Heck, we only got tokenomics just recently and they only launched it on the day we released. So I think there's something interesting going on there. The second thing I want to point out is that this is actually an anon team. And with all anon teams, they carry this risk of just the project running. We don't even know who the people are. Lastly, of course, because now they are backed by Paradigm and they do have a equity raise round, they will be eventually obliged to look after equity more than token holders. All right. That's just a sad part. You know, who's going to sue them? Who has the rights to sue them? Well, the equity holders do. So this is what's kind of causing the issue right now. And finally, of course, this token like airdrop period where everyone's hyped up and pumped up. What's going to happen after this is over? But if this is all true and it's high risk, shouldn't it be, you know, low reward as well? This is where it gets interesting because when it launched, right, Blur launched and rocketed all the way to $8. Then it dropped, it kind of found its floor. So I'm kind of sensing here almost these Uniswap vibes, right? This is kind of the same behavior that happened when Uniswap launched a coin, Uni. When Uni first launched, obviously the token just crashed down a bit. Once it found its floor, then people started picking that up and the token price rose again. Which is what I'm kind of suspecting is happening here. Because there was a huge dump in the initial wave from $8 where all the airdrop holders, you know, over 90% of airdrop holders actually collected their tokens. Which means, you know, they have it and they're looking, you know, if they're not looking to dump, they won't collect it, right? So they're looking to dump, but after this dumpage is complete, there could be a recovery phase, which might be what we're in right now. So that's what my short term feeling is. And I'm definitely very excited to see what this platform is going to do. Now, is it, you know, the best thing since sliced bread? I think it's going to be not as big as, you know, a cryptocurrency coin exchange. When NFTs are coming to play, you know, NFTs just don't have that insane volume that most coins do. So, kind of, it's not going to be, you know, Binance level. But I do say it could reach, you know, 20, 30% of Binance trading volume. In the near future, people will like trading NFTs and if NFTs reheat up again. So, I kind of see that there's a potential there, but it's not going to be ultra massive and hence justifying why I think there's moderate potential here for this project. So, if you guys have any feedback on what you guys think about Blur, do you think it's, you know, it's too fishy right now? Or do you think this is, you know, the best thing since sliced bread is going to revitalize NFTs? Leave a comment down below. I'd love to hear what you think. We also have more videos coming up very soon. So, make sure you stay tuned. Click that subscribe button and I'll see you in the next video.