NFT marketplaces are platforms where anyone can buy, sell, and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They offer tools and services for creators and collectors to enable the creation, minting, and trading of NFTs.
In this article, we’ll look at the differences between two popular NFT marketplaces – Blur and Opensea.
Differences between Blur and Opensea
Blur is an NFT marketplace and aggregator that was introduced on October 19, 2022, to help users purchase NFTs, compare NFTs across markets and manage portfolios using in-built powerful analytics. The platform prides itself on being 10 times faster for NFT-based transactions compared to any other NFT aggregator in the market.
The Ethereum-based NFT marketplace operates with no trading cost on NFT sales and is designed to cater to professional and whale traders. It was launched by Tieshun Roquerre AKA PacmanBlur on Twitter with funding support from VC firm, Paradigm.
Opensea is the world’s largest decentralized marketplace for buying, selling, and discovering non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It provides tools and services for NFT developers and collectors and enables users to simply and securely generate, purchase, and sell NFTs.
Opensea, which was founded in 2017 by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, is a multichain platform with integration in Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, and BNB.
Blur is focused on serving NFT traders and collectors. Users on Blur can connect their wallet, and upload an NFT that can be traded with other users. They can also decide to browse through the top and trending collections on the platform with a view to sweeping the prices and doing a resell for profit.
Sweeping an NFT collection involves buying several floor-priced NFTs, which can be cumbersome, but Blur makes it easier especially with the help of a bot. In essence, NFTs are not created or minted on Blur like on Opensea.
With the help of the Snipe reveal tool on Blur, users can see NFT listings in real time before they are seen on other NFT aggregators. This gives them an opportunity to buy in before other users. Blur’s advanced analytics allow users to also track their portfolio profits and losses.
On Opensea, users are permitted to mint new NFTs using the tools provided in the platform. After minting the NFTs, they are listed for trading by users in Opensea and other marketplaces that are aggregated with Opensea. Opensea also gives a free minting service to users.
Because of the new trend of providing more tools focused on trading as against creating new NFTs, in the NFT industry, Opensea opened a new platform, Opensea Pro. Opensea Pro is an NFT aggregator launched by Opensea after acquiring Gem.xyz in April 2023. It is seen as feedback to counter the dominance of Blur as they offer similar services.
Blur has a native token $BLUR powering through the platform which has a total supply of 3 billion. The token will be fully released in five years, starting in 2022. According to Blur, 51% of $BLUR will go to the community, 29% is designed as a reward for contributors, with a four-year vesting period; 19% and 1% will go to investors and advisors respectively.
Blur initiated its first airdrop in February 2023 where users were rewarded with millions of tokens. The team is planning another season of an airdrop for its users.
Opensea does not have a special single token that drives its ecosystem like Blur. Users can interact with Opensea using 150 different payment tokens. These include $UNI, $WHALE, USDC, Ethereum (ETH/WETH), SOL, AVAX, USDC, BNB, and DAI.
Blur does not charge users fees; rather, fees users pay are always attached to other NFT marketplaces they access from Blur. On royalties, Blur has options for users to set royalties at the price they want and even to zero. This makes it flexible for users to choose who and what NFT they wish to buy or sell.
Trading and minting of NFTs on Opensea come with a cost. During the minting and listing of NFTs, users pay gas fees well. On Opensea Pro, traders are not required to pay any fee and royalty is set at a minimum of 0.5%.
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Trading volumes and active users
While Blur has surpassed Opensea as the platform with the most market share – 71.8% – in Q1 2023, Opensea remains the largest NFT marketplace in terms of the number of unique wallets.
From October 2022 to January 2023, Blur saw an increase of Daily Unique Active users to 5,000. The number dropped in mid-January 2023 but peaked at an all-time high of more than 10,000 in mid-February. For Opensea, the number of Daily Unique Active users has not gone below 10,000 since October 2022. The peak within this same period happened in April at over 40,000 users.
Opensea gave the NFT community a huge boost in its earlier days and has accrued a lot of accolades over years. Blur is a new project that is creating and maximizing new opportunities in the NFT marketplace. And one other unique difference between both marketplaces is a DAO.
While there’s no record of an Opensea DAO, Blur has a DAO called Blur DAO which is responsible for creating a more decentralized structure for the project and managing the development and allocation of tokens in Blur. Users who want to be part of the DAO can do so by registering via delegating their tokens.
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