Blur peaked at about $1.43 billion in monthly trading volume in March 2023. By March this year it was under $7 million, according to The Block’s data, and on 12 October the marketplace said it would close its website in November.
The onchain protocol will keep running, and the BLUR token will still control its fee switch.
The lending product Blend will stop matching new loans on 12 November, and borrowers have until then to repay or let their loans default. Blur plans a tool to help users withdraw their assets afterwards.
The token fell more than 20 percent on the news, to about $0.015, giving it a market value near $44 million. It traded above $5 in early 2023.
Blur’s decline follows Blast and Abstract, two Ethereum layer 2 networks that announced wind-downs in the past fortnight. Blast was created by Blur’s founder, Tieshun Roquerre, and built by the same core team.
Critics have long argued that Blur’s incentive model rewarded airdrop farming and suspected wash trading, and that its low creator-royalty policy squeezed the artists and studios, Yuga Labs among them, that had made the market.
Roquerre said in early 2023 that he wanted to build the Binance of NFTs. The ambition was real, and for a few months so was the volume.
What is not clear is what remains of a marketplace once the front end is gone. A protocol that anyone can call is still there, but without an interface, a team keeping it liquid and a reason for traders to show up, it is hard to say who would use it.
